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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 




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MODERN 



FISHCULTURE 



IN 



FRESH AND SALT WATER 



BY 

FRED MATHER 

Author of ''Men I Have Fished With" 

FORMERLY ASSISTANT TO THE U. S. FISH COMMISSION, LATt 

SUPERINTENDENT OF THE N. Y. STATE HATCHERY 

AT COLD SPRING HARBOR, LONG ISLAND, 

WITH 

A CHAPTER ON WHITEFISH CULTURE BY HON. HERSCHEL 
WHITAKER, FISH COMMISSIONER OF MICHIGAN, AND 
A CHAPTER ON THE PIKE-PERCH BY JAMES 
NEVIN, SUPERINTENDENT OF THE WIS- 
CONSIN FISH COMMISSION. 



ILLUSTRATED 



New York 
FOREST AND STREAM PUBLISHING COMPANY 



iqoo 



TWO COPIES Rt, 



< .■ t i V ti, . > 



Library of CoBgrr«t% 
Offlctt of this 

MAR 8 -1900 

Keglst»r of Copyrlghti^ 



54891 



Copyrighted 1900, 

BY 

FOREST AND STREAM PUBLISHING COMPANY. 



sfiooNB copy; 



TABLE OF CONTENTS, 



PAGE. 



Why the Book Was Written 9 

A Glance at Fishculture 13 



SECTION I. 

TROUT BREEDING. 

CHAPTER I. 

Introduction , 22 

Water Supply 23 

Pollution of Waters <, 24 

A Word About Trou^ . . • » . • 30 

How Nature Does It. 31 

Eggs of Trout - 34 

Marketable Trout 35 

CHAPTER n. 

In the Hatching House 40 

Trough for Young Salnionidae 47 

Why Do We Use Coal Tar? 48 

Hatching Trays 50 

Preparing for Hatching 52 

CHAPTER HI. 

Trout Eggs — Distinguishing Sex in Fishes 56 

Taking Trout Eggs 60 

Spawn from Wild Trout 66 

Number of Eggs in Trout 70 

Packing Eggs for Shipment 72 

1 



2 Table of Contents. 

CHAPTER IV. PAGE. 

Care of Trout Eggs 78 

Tools of the Craft 82 

Hatching in Bulk 83 

CHAPTER V. 

Care of Fry 86 

CHAPTER VI. 

Feeding Fry 92 

How Others Feed Fry 98 

Comments on the Methods of Feeding lOi 

Introducing New Blood 102 

Growth of Fry 103 

Automatic Feeders 104 

Putting Out the Babies 105 

CHAPTER VII. 

Streams 107 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Ponds o .... 112 

Large Single Ponds US 

Ponds in Series 118 

Drains , .-- 121 

Dams 123 

Screens for Ponds 123 



CHAPTER IX. 

Temperatures » . 127 

CHAPTER X. 

Food for Adult Trout— Mussels 128 

Soft Clams 129 

Horse Meat 130 

Beef Lights and Maggots 130 

Fish 131 

Haslets 132 

Natural Foods 132 

How They Feed in Japan 134 

Patent Foods 136 

What Others Say About Food 137 



Table of Contents. 3 

CHAPTER XI. PAGE. 

Planting Fry .......= .... 138 

Stock Heavily 141 

Time to Plant Fry 141 

CHAPTER Xn. 

Transplanting Adult Fish c ...... . 144 



SECTION II. 

OTHER TROUTS AND THE SALMONS. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

The Salmons 147 

The Pacific Salmons 147 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Other Troiits — Brown Trout 149 

Growth of Brown Trout 153 

Rainbow Trout 156 

The Rainbow in England 158 

Lake Trout 166 

CHAPTER XV. 

Hybrid Fish 169 

Shad and Alewife 169 

Shad and Striped Bass , 170 

CHAPTER XVI. 
Barren Trout and Annual Spawners. 173 



SECTION III. 

OTHER SALMON ID JE. 

CHAPTER XVII. 
Grayling 175 



4 Table of Contents. 

CHAPTER XVIII. PAGE. 

Whitefishes .' i8i 

CHAPTER XIX. 
The Whitefish and Its Culture 182 



SECTION IV. 

OTHER FRESHWATER FISH WITH FREE EGGS. 

CHAPTER XX. 
Pike, Pickerel and Mascalonge 191 

CHAPTER XXI. 

Shad 192 

Shad Fry Across the Atlantic 198 

The Bell and Mather Hatching Cone 199 

The Chase Jar 203 

The McDonald Jar 204 

CHAPTER XXII. 
Striped Bass or Rock Fish 204 



SECTION V. 

ADHESIVE EGGS. 

CHAPTER XXIII. 
The Adirondack Frostfish 208 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

Smelt 210 

Smelt in New Hampshire 213 



Table of Contents. 5 

CHAPTER XXV. page. 

The Black Basses 213 

Small-Mouth 214 

Big-Mouth 214 

Black Bass Culture ., 218 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

The Crappies 221 

Small-Mouth Crappie 221 

Big-Mouth Crappie 222 

Culture of Crappie 222 

Names 224 

Value of the Crappie 224 

Habits 227 



CHAPTER XXVH. 
White Perch • 228 

CHAPTER XXVHI. 

The Pike Perch 230 

Wall- Eyed Pike 230 

The Sauger 232 

Hatching Wail-Eyed Pike Eggs 232 

CHAPTER XXIX. 
Cat Fish 239 

CHAPTER XXX. 

Carp 241 

Castrating Carp 242 

CHAPTER XXXI. 
The Alewives 243 

CHAPTER XXXII. 
Sturgeon 245 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 
Yellow Perch 245 



6 Table of ContenU, 

SECTION VI. 

PARASITES, DISEASES AND ENEMIES. 

CHAPTER XXXIV. page. 

Parasites 250 

External Parasites 251 

Internal Parasites 254 

CHAPTER XXXV. 

Diseases 255 

A Dead Horse 257 

Fish That Die After Spawning 259 

An Epidemic 260 

CHAPTER XXXVI. 

Enemies 267 

Fish 268 

Reptiles and Batrachians 260 

A Plant 278 

Insects and Their Larvae 279 

Mammals 283 



SECTION VII. 

SALT-WATER FISH. 

CHAPTER XXXVII. 
Codfish 292 

CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
Tomcod 294 

CHAPTER XXXIX. 

Lobsters 296 

Lobsters are Biennial Spawners 296 



Table of Contents. 7 
SECTION VIII. 

MISCELLANEOUS. 

CHAPTER XL. page. 

Frog Culture 30i 

A Great Transformation ^'-'^ 

Marketing of Frogs 304 



CHAPTER XLI. 
Terrapins ^. 3 

CHAPTER XLH. 

Number of Eggs in Different Fish 309 

Table of Number of Eggs in Various Fishes 3io 



CHAPTER XLHI. 
The Working or Blooming of Ponds 3ii 

CHAPTER XLIV. 
Fishways ^ 

CHAPTER XLV. 
Fishes Which Guard Their Young 320 

CHAPTER XLVI. 
How Fish Find Their Own Rivers 322 

CHAPTER XLVn. 
Dynamiting a Lake 324 

CHAPTER XLVHI. 
To Measure the Flow of Water 325 




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WHY THE BOOK WAS WRITTEN. 



When I began fishculture in 1868, by buying a farm 
near Honeoye Falls, Monroe County, N. Y., to begin 
raising trout, there was little available literature on 
the subject. The only book I knew of was a book 
entitled "American Fishculture, embracing all the de- 
tails of artificial breeding and rearing of trout, the cul- 
ture of salmon, shad and other fishes," by Thaddeus 
Norris. It was published that same year and gave 
what was then known of the subject, and by its feeble 
light I began work, but found that I had it all to learn. 

Fifteen miles west of me a man was breeding trout, 
but he did not approve of what he considered an in- 
vasion of his particular domain, and no information 
could be had in that quarter ; so I learned my lesson by 
many expensive experiments and mistakes. 

The sale of eggs and fry was the most profitable part 
of trout farming then, and Mr. A. S. Collins, Dr. J. H. 
Slack and I called a meeting to agree upon a scale of 
prices. The preliminary meeting was held in New- 
York in 1870, but the following year we met in Albany 
and organized The American Fishculturists' Associa- 
tion, with some twenty members. Papers on fishcul- 
ture were read, but the sale of eggs and fry did not 
come up ; we took a broader course. Massachusetts, 
New York, Connecticut and other States had organ- 
ized Fish Commissions, and we adopted a resolution 
that the general Government should have something of 
the kind, and appointed Mr. George Shepard Page a 



10 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

committee of one to go to Washington and lay the mat- 
ter before Congress. He did this, after consulting 
Prof. Spencer F. Baird, then Assistant Secretary of 
the Smithsonian Institution. To avoid all struggle for 
the office, Prof. Baird had a clause inserted that the 
Commissioner should serve without salary, and he was 
appointed to be Fish Commissioner in 1871. 

Prof. Baird called me to assist in the shad hatching 
on the Fludson and the Connecticut rivers, and in 1874 
sent me to Germany with 100,000 young shad. I was 
again sent to Germany with eggs of cjuinnat salmon in 
1877, and also in 1879. I had devised a refrigerating 
box for salmon eggs which was a success ; but, like my 
conical apparatus for hatching shad eggs in bulk, it 
was not patented. 

In 1880 Prof. Baird appointed me to the charge of 
the American exhibit of angling and fishcultural ap- 
paratus at the International Fisheries Exposition held 
in Berlin, Prof. G. Brown Goode representing the 
Commissioner. 

When Air. Eugene G. Blackford was made one of 
the Fish Commissioners of the State of New York he 
wanted a hatchery on Long Island. Seth Green, the 
Superintendent of the Commission, opposed it and said 
there was no fit place on the Island. Mr. Blackford 
engaged me to examine the waters and to report. I 
reported that at Cold Spring Harbor was a fine place 
for both fresh and salt water fishculture, and I secured 
the place for the Commission from its owner, Mr. John 
D. Jones, without cost to the State. This was in 1882, 
and that winter I began hatching salmon for the Hud- 
son, for the United States Fish Commission at Roslyn, 
Long Island, and Green sent a man to put troughs in 
gn old building at Cold Spring Harbor, but soon re- 



Why the Book JVas Written. ii 

called him. ]\Ir. Blackford then asked me to take 
charge of it, which I did on January i, 1883, and four 
years later planned and built the present hatchery, 
which is not only the best, but is also the most impor- 
tant one in the State. There I learned how to hatch 
over 70 per cent, of the adhesive eggs of the smelt, and 
in the hatching of lobsters discovered that they spawn 
Oiily once in two years. Changes in the Commission 
threw me out in 1895. 

These things are mentioned merely to show that I 
have some right to opinions on fishculture after an ex- 
perience of thirty years, and, there being no modern 
book on general fishculture, outside of the Government 
publications, such a book has been asked for ; but as 
trout breeding is not only the parent of fishculture, but 
the most popular form o'f it, a large portion of the book 
is devoted to that branch, and I hope that the novice 
may profit by it and avoid many failures which fell to 
the lot of those who were the pioneers in this work. 

On methods where fishculturists dififer about details 
I have given the opinions of some of the best informed 
men in America, and in the culture of whitefish and 
wall-eyed pike, where my own experience has been 
little or nothing, I have asked well-known men of ex- 
perience to write these chapters in order that the book 
may be as nearly perfect as possible. Fishculturists 
may differ with me on some small matters, but that is 
to be expected, and will not affect the general result. 

The book has been many years in preparation in the 
way of gathering material, circulars having been sent 
to fishculturists in J 891 concerning the feeding of frv 
in troughs and of the diseases of adult trout, the anr 
swers to which will be found under those heads. 

Naturally, reference is frequently made to m^ own 



12 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

work and experience, but this is the only work on fish- 
culture in any language which gives the experience of 
others, although one or two of the older ones occasion- 
ally hint that there were some dabblers in the art at the 
time they were writing. 

As this book is intended to be original, I have re- 
frained during the past five years from looking into 
any fishcultural work, outside the Government publica- 
tions, for fear that I might unconsciously quote the 
author. When the opinions of others seemed to be 
needed on mooted points, they were written to and their 
answers are given. 

Last, but not least, the book was written because the 
publishers have been flooded with demands for such a 
work, and, outside of Government publications, there 
is no book which covers the whole ground since Norris 
published "American Fishculture,'^ in 1868, now long 
out of print. 

These seem to be good and sufTficient reasons for the 
existence of a book on Modern Fishculture. 

F. M. 

April 20, 1899. 



A GLANCE AT FISH CULTURE. 



Hundreds, and perhaps thousands of years ago, the 
Chinese placed twigs in the water to catch the adhesive 
spawn of some species of fish. This is the extent of the 
work done by them, only this and nothing more. The 
eggs were placed in other waters and left to hatch. As 
ir has been claimed that they were far ahead of us in 
fishculture, I made inquiry of learned Chinamen at the 
Fisheries Exposition in Berlin in 1880, and know that 
their fishculturalworkis of the crudest sort, and has not 
improved. In the United States the work has made the 
greatest strides and has been prosecuted on a scale not 
equalled elsewhere. Then come Canada, Germany, 
Norway, Sweden and other countries, but England has 
done nothing in a public way ; fishculture there is en- 
tirely in private hands and is confined to private waters, 
largely on the estates of wealthy gentlemen. 

The question is often asked, "Will it pay to raise 
trout?" So much depends upon local conditions that 
only a general answer can be made. If the water sup- 
plv is large and not too warm; if food can be had in 
plenty at a very low price and there is a good market 
near, then it will pay to raise trout for market, if you can 
do it on a sufficiently large scale ; or, if there are anglers 
near who will pay for what they catch, they form the 
best market. There are places where trout can be 
grown for food in limited numbers without expense, 
and the price received is nearly all profit. If the waters 
are too warm for trout they can be made to produce 
other fish, 3uch as black bass or perch ; or if not these, 



13 



14 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

then carp, which I do not look upon with favor. All 
these subjects will be treated at length under their re- 
spective heads. 

Fishculture — and I always prefer this word to the 
Latin, pisciculture, as I do the good English word eggs 
to ova — is a paying investment for the government and 
for such States as have suitable waters. If New York 
had not hatched shad in the Hudson each year since 
1869 there would be few or none there now. The in- 
crease of population, and above all the facilities for 
transportation, are so great that the drain on the river 
would be more than it could stand. North River, 
another name for the Hudson, shad are now sent to Chi- 
cago, and beyond, and the number of fishermen has in- 
creased with the demand for shad. This is why shad 
do not become cheaper when so many more millions are 
hatched. They seldom sell for less than $10 per hun- 
dred at the nets. As proof of the assertion that shad 
would be nearly extinct in the Hudson but for artificial 
hatching, I will cite the case of the Connecticut River, 
once so famous for the number as well as the quality of 
its shad. Years ago there was an arrangement to share 
the expense Oi' shad hatching by the States of Massachu- 
setts and Connecticut, and they turned out many fish. 
Then the commissioners quarreled ; the men of Mas- 
sachusetts complained that they did not get their share 
of the shad, because the pounds at the mouth of the 
river took the bulk of the fish. The hatching stopped 
some twenty years ago, and now the Connecticut fur- 
nishes very few shad, so few that it does not pay to 
fish for them above the mouth of the river. There 
was a similar dispute about the salmon in the Rhine ; 
Germany hatched them and Holland caught them, 
reaping the benefit without any expense. 



A Glance at FishcuUure. 15 

Shad only come to the rivers to breed. Those caught 
for food when ripe are lost for that purpose unless the 
lishculturist saver ther^, and he hatches millions which 
would otherwise be lost. 

Again the Connecticut River. It was once a famous 
salmon river. My grandfather has told me of seeing 
his father, Joseph Mather, who ran a ferry from Lyme 
to Saybrook, at the mouth of the river, over 125 years 
ago, take so many salmon in his net that he could not 
land them for fear of tearing the net, and part had to 
be released. In the late 70's the salmon had not been 
seen in the river for over a quarter of a century, and 
the States above mentioned, in connection with Ver- 
mont, New Hampshire and the United States, shared 
the expense of restocking the river with salmon fry 
from the Penobscot. The salmon fishery was restored 
and in a few years Connecticut salmon were common 
in the markets of New York, Boston and other cities. 
Then came the old trouble about the nets at the mouth 
of the river and the stocking ceased. The run of fish 
kept up for two or three years afterward and Con- 
necticut salmon were no longer caught. 

It is difficult to tell the results of fishculture in waters 
where the fish which are bred have always existed, but 
when a species is placed in water where it is not a na- 
tive, and thrives there, the fishculturist can point to it 
with pride. Shad and striped bass were unknown on 
the Pacific coast until planted there over twenty years 
ago, and now they are not only plenty in the Sacra- 
mento River, where the plants were made, but shad 
have strayed north and stocked waters as high up as 
Puget Sound. Not only that, but Mr. Blackford has 
seen shad in California which weighed as high as 16 
pounds, while one of half that size is a monster on the 



1 6 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

Atlantic coast. Striped bass are also common there. 
The salmon and the brown trout have been introduced 
into Australia, the rainbow trout into England and Ger- 
many with marked success, and if more examples are 
required I would refer to the introduction of the brown 
trout of Europe into America ; but these are enough to 
show that the so-called artificial breeding of fish is a 
valuable industry if carried on intelligently. 

The broad, unqualified assertion that "an acre of 
water is more valuable than an acre of land," started by 
some enthusiastic fishculturist years ago, is liable to 
hurt the cause of fishculture if used seriously. There 
can be no such comparison. Land and w^ater are val- 
uable for what they will produce ; some land is worth- 
less and so is some water, yet we must admit that the 
latter might produce more food than it does, for out- 
side of Great Salt Lake I do not know of any American 
waters, unless alkaline ones, which will not produce 
food of some kind fit for the use of man, while I do 
know of barren sands that would not grow an ounce of 
food. The fact is that some acres of water are worth 
more than some acres of land, and vice versa. There is 
no fixed rule or ratio of values. I know of a spot where 
springs well up on about 40 acres of swamp land within 
as many miles of New York City, and make a splendid 
trout stream, which I would prefer to an equal amount 
of the best farming land in the State ; but that is an ex- 
ception. The Great Lakes do not yield as valuable prod- 
ucts as an equal area of the best farming land. But then 
the Great Lakes are in a state of nature, the fishes in 
them are not selected, and worthless species prey upon 
the more valuable ones. Perhaps that's not a fair com- 
parison, and I wish to be fair. Take the mill-pond of 20 
acres. Here the water may be drawn off and in some 



A Glance at Pishciilttir^, 17 

cases the worthless species can be killed. Then it is a 
question of temperature, location and other things 
which will determine its value with an equal area of 
land. There is no fixed value for either land or water, 
therefore the assertion quoted^is absurd and misleading. 
The rearing of some fishes is attended with more care 
than that of others ; for instance, the trout may be raised 
in several different ways involving more or less care and 
expense in the preparation of ponds, hatching appa- 
ratus, etc., according to the system adopted, which is de- 
pendent upon the amount of flow, extent of ponds and 
the inclination of the owner — and here let me say that in 
the culture of fishes there are none which require as 
much care as the trout. It is very particular about the 
temperature in which it will live, anything above 75 de- 
grees Fahrenheit, except in swiftly running water, be- 
ing fatal ; therefore its culture is prohibited in all waters 
where the bottom temperature rises above that figure. 
Few fish eggs are easier to care for and hatch than those 
of the trout, coming as they do from October to March, 
as any running stream is then cold enough, even though 
its summer temperature would be fatal to the young 
fish, and the eggs will endure any degree of cold short 
of freezing solid, even if surrounded by ice. As an off- 
set to this, the young are delicate if kept in confined 
quarters, as they are likely to be if hatched in great 
numbers, and not turned into a stream or pond well sup- 
plied with natural food, but kept to be fed by hand ; and 
although 90 per cent, of the eggs may easily be hatched 
and the greater portion of them may live during the 
embryonic period in which they are subsisting upon the 
yolk sac, which remains attached to the abdomen for a 
period of forty to fifty days before they need food, they 
are then apt, as before stated, to die very rapidly, and if 



l8 Modern Fishculturenn Fresh and Salt Water. 

75 or 80 per cent, of the young are kept through the 
month of May, it is, in my opinion, a good average, and 
much more than I did in my first three years of trout 
culture. In those days there was no one to give the re- 
suhs of experience, at least none who would do so, and 
we had to blunder through and profit the next season by 
the dearly-bought experience of the last. A young trout 
which is safely brought through the month of May has 
passed all infantile dangers and is almost as good as 
raised. 

The culture of the carnivorous fishes is attended with 
more dangers than that of others, as in addition to the 
number of enemies they will devour their own kind ; 
and the trout is a truly carnivorous fish, notvv^ithstand- 
ing the fact that it has been starved into eating corn 
bread and other vegetarian diet. This habit necessi- 
tates the keeping of the different sizes apart, if small 
ponds are used, and increases the care and trouble. 

Of our other carnivorous, or perhaps piscivorous 
fishes, there are few or none which are worth the atten- 
tion of the farmer, or wdiich could be made a source of 
much food or any profit. Waters are stocked with the 
black bass for the sport of catching them ; but they pro- 
duce but little food, while the pike or pickerel {Esox) 
which are caught for sport are so fearfully destructive 
that anglers protest against their introduction into any 
waters not inhabited by them. In order to bring the 
habits of fishes and their different characters more plain- 
ly before the minds of those who have never studied 
them closely, they might be compared, in respect to their 
food, to certain well-known quadrupeds, in a general 
sort of way, first stating that there are no fishes which 
are so strictly vegetarians as some mammals are. We 
may then compare the pike, bass, and perch to the car- 



A Glance at Fishcultitre. 19 

nivorous cats, as the pike eats nothing but fish, while 
the other two vary their diet with an occasional worm 
or fly ; the trout, when wild, may be also classed with 
those fishes, but under domestication its appetite, like 
that of the domestic dog, can be changed into one nearly 
resembling that of the omnivorous hog. This, however, 
requires to be received with some caution, as, although 
trout have been kept on corn bread and "dog biscuit," 
and are reported, by apparently good authority, as thriv- 
ing upon that diet, yet it remains to be proved that they 
will breed freely under those conditions. If so, then, 
and not until then, it can be claimed that trout have been 
turned into vegetarians. Still this fish is not so much of 
a fish eater as those named above until it reaches a 
weight of over a pound, when it needs a more sub- 
stantial meal than flies and worms, although it still takes 
them as entrees. 

Perhaps those of our native fishes which more nearly 
resemble the herbivora — at least in their gregarious 
habits, if not entirely in diet — are included in the fami- 
lies known to scientists as the Cyprinidcc and Catostom- 
idcc, which may be said to include all the toothless 
fishes of our fresh waters which have only one dorsal 
fin, composed entirely of soft rays, excepting the her- 
ring-like forms. The largest of these are the sucker 
tribes, which, in the tributaries of the Mississippi,- often 
reach a weight of eight to ten pounds in the species lo- 
cally known as "buffalo" and "red horse," But they 
are not worth raising, for the carp is in the same class, 
is a better table fish and is easily raised, but it is of little 
value in the cool waters of the North and will be con- 
sidered later. 

Fishes are as susceptible to the influences of domesti- 
cation as any other animals, and perhaps our brook trout 



20 Modem Pishculture in Presh and Salt Waief. 

may a century from this begin to show changes in favor 
of early maturity, hardihood, and freedom from early 
death by the continued breeding from the strongest, if 
our breeders will not resort to the practice of introduc- 
ing wild stock into their ponds, thereby neutralizing 
all their efforts in this direction. Mr. Stone talks of 
^'Domesticated Trout," and why not? The carp intro- 
duced from Germany shows what can be done in this 
line. It is a great improvement over the English carp. 
The Germans produced a quick-growing fish, and by 
selection bred the scales off from it. 

The carp is not the only fish which shows signs of im- 
provement under domestication. The Chinese and Ja- 
panese have for centuries bred the gold fish for orna- 
mental purposes, and have produced results that are 
singular in their ''telescope fish," that have projecting 
eyes which seem almost to be placed on stalks ; some 
of these which were in the writer's possession had eyes 
fully a quarter of an inch out from the head, a position 
in which they would be so liable to injury in a state of 
nature that the fish could not live. Another form is 
with the long, drooping, soft tail of the kingio, which 
was loaned by Mr. Gill, of Baltimore, to the old New 
York Aquarium, and for which he was said to have re- 
fused $2,000. 

Such abnormal fishes are produced by continued se- 
lection, in the same manner as our improved breeds of 
cattle are ; but American fishculturists have never paid 
any attention to the ornamental part of their business, 
being engaged in trying to produce food fishes, or those 
which may be called "angler's fishes," all of which are 
of more or less value for the table. 

In a private way there are a few who have made trout 
culture for market moderately profitable, and these have 



A Glance at Pishctdture. 2i 

had exceptional facilities in the manner of a supply of 
water and cheap and abundant food for them ; yet there 
is a chance, even with the smallest of streams, of so cul- 
tivating the water, which is now a waste so far as the 
production of food is concerned, that it will at least fur- 
nish the family table with a welcome variety of whole- 
some food at a small outlay. The fact has been demon- 
strated that intelligent fishculture is one of our indus- 
tries that those who have facilities for it are unwise to 
neglect. 



SECTION I. 



TROUT BREEDING. 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTION. 

The breeding of trout was the beginning of fishcul- 
ture, and this was first practised in 1741 by Stephan 
Ludwig Jacobi, a Heutenant in the German Army, liv- 
ing at Hoenhausen, a small town in Westphalia. The 
claim that the monk, Dom Pinchon, bred trout in the 
fifteenth century is not well supported. Jacobi reported 
his discovery some years after to the great naturalist, 
Buffon, and the British Government granted him a pen- 
sion. In 1837 Mr. John Shaw, of Drumlaurig. hatched 
salmon from eggs taken by hand in Great Britain. The 
first work of the kind in America was done by Dr. Theo- 
datus Garlick and his partner, Prof. Ackley, in 1853; 
but at that time it was regarded as merely a curious ex- 
periment, having no bearing on the question of pro- 
ducing food. Public attention was first called to fishcul- 
ture in America in 1856 by an act of the Massachusetts 
Legislature appointing three commissioners to report 
such facts concerning the artificial propagation of fish as 
might tend to show the practicability and expediency of 
introducing the same into the Commonwealth under the 

protection of law. In 1859 Mr. Stephen H. Ainsworth, 

22 



Trout Breeding. 23 

of West Bloomfield, N. Y., bred trout successfully in a 
stream which in a dry time was hardly larger than a lead 
pencil, but his pond was beneath his hatchery and was 
completely shaded. Naturally he bred but few trout, 
but he demonstrated what could be done. Then Green, 
Stone, myself and others started at the work. 



WATER SUPPLY. 

upon the volume and temperature of the water de- 
pends the success of the venture in trout breeding. That 
taken from near the fountain-head is best for hatching 
purposes if it be well aerated by falling a short distance 
through the air, or spread out into a thin sheet as it en- 
ters the trough. By taking it from a pool, or reservoir, 
near the springs, we get less sediment and more even 
temperatures and are not disturbed by rains or thaws ; 
and by taking from a reservoir it has a chance to get 
colder in winter and so retard the hatching, an ad- 
vantage which we will consider under the head of hatch- 
ing. A certain amount of fall to the water into the 
hatching house is a necessity, and it should be at least 
ten inches ; while a foot is needed between ponds, if they 
are small and in a series. Select your water supply in 
the driest time of the year and note its temperature at 
2 p. M. on the warmest day. See that no freshet can 
sweep down a ravine to clog your screens and carry off 
the results of your labor. A sudden thaw with rain on 
a frozen ground may destroy the work of years. 

Above all do not dam a ravine and make your ponds 
in the bottom of it. This is the first plan which sug- 
gests itself to the man who has given no thought to the 
subject. There is always some fall in a ravine, and if 



24 Modern Fishcutture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

you put a dam across it, tap it at one side and make the 
ponds on that side, well guarded by a ditch, so that no 
surface water can get into the ponds or increase their 
flow. 

As the "shells" of fish eggs do not contain lime, soft 
water is as good as hard for their culture. 



THE POLLUTION OF WATERS. 

Ordinary house sewage does not seem to afifect fish 
either in health or flavor. The Hudson River is one 
vast sewer for such large cities as Troy, Albany, Hud- 
son, Poughkeepsie, Newburg, Sing Sing, Peekskill, 
Yonkers and New York, as well as of hundreds of 
smaller places, yet the shad and salmon run to the dam 
at Troy and are as healthy and fine flavored there as 
those caught below. It is difficult to poison a great river 
like the Hudson. I don't mean to say that these fish 
would live in the sewers ; far from it ; but the fact is that 
the sewage comes in at the sides of the river, is soon di- 
luted, precipitated and rendered harmless. This is not 
the case with many chemicals, nor with sawdust. 

Sazvdust. There is a popular idea that sawdust kills 
of¥ the trout in a stream by clogging the gills of the fish. 
Such a thing might have happened, but a trout is not 
killed by sand in its gills. The great harm that saw- 
dust does is by smothering the spawning beds, more or 
less, and in impregnating the water with turpentine 
from pine and tannin from oak, which destroy the trout 
while in the ^gg. See the chapter on hatching troughs 
and the impossibility of hatching trout in troughs of 
raw, new wood. 

Chemicals of many kinds will kill any and all fish if 



Trout Breeding. 25 

they run into them. Lime from paper mills, the chlo- 
ride, I believe, used for bleaching, is deadly on the side 
of the river in which it flows. The paper mills which 
make their stock from wood pulp do not use one-tenth 
the lime for bleaching which the other mills require. 

The Massachusetts Comm.issioners of Fisheries, in 
their report for 1866, say : 

"To state in a comprehensive way what is the effect 
of certain impurities in water, is by no means easy. 
Even supposing the mixtures thus made (refuse from 
factories) to be constant and stable (which they are not), 
their effect upon different animal and vegetable organ- 
isms would be quite variable. Chemical analysis is no 
such great helper in the difficulty as might be supposed. 
A science that is still so imperfect as to call starch and 
sugar the same thing, and that cannot tell a good wine 
from bad, is hardly a reliable support in testing the fine 
questions of animal likes and dislikes. . . . The 
sole way, therefore, of arriving at any result is, to make 
a great number of experiments upon the animals, and 
under the conditions required. To make such a series 
of experiments did not lie within the power of the Com- 
missioners, but, to establish some main facts, a few cases 
were tested, as follows : 

Experiment A. A young bream {Poniotis vulgaris) 
put in a glass of water, to which 1-200 in bulk of sul- 
phuric acid was added, died in four minutes. 

Experiment B. The same species, in a similar glass 
of water, to which i-ioo in bulk of concentrated solu- 
tion of soap was added, died in two minutes. 

Experiment C. A young shiner (Leuciscus cryso- 
leucas) in a glass of water, to which 1-500 in bulk of 
chloride of lime was added, was distressed, but did not 
die for seven minutes. 



26 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

Expb:riment D. A full grown shad (Alosa prcesta- 
bills) in a large tub of water, to which 1-400 in bulk of 
sulphuric acid was added, died almost immediately. 

Experiment E. A similar fish, in a tub of water, to 
which 1-200 of concentrated solution of soap was added, 
became uneasy, and turned several times on its side, but 
at the end of five minutes was still alive and tolerably 
active. Compare the effect of soap on the bream. 

Experiment F. A similar fish, in a tub of water, to 
which 1-200 in bulk of dry chloride of lime was added, 
became violently excited, then exhausted, and at the end 
of three minutes from the beginning, died from a rup- 
ture of the gill vessels. 

''In these experiments large proportions of the pois- 
ons were used, in order to show plainly the effect o{ 
each. What the effects would have been on salmon we 
cannot infer, except that we know, in general, that the 
trouts are more fastidious than fish like the shad, and 
are more easily destroyed. A shovelful of powdered 
quicklime thrown on the water over a shoal of trout, 
will bring a number of themi dead to the surface within 
ten minutes. Many trout brooks in England have been 
depopulated by drains from copper mines emptying into 
them; the insoluble sulphurets sink to the bottom of 
the brook, where they decompose, giving off free sul- 
phuric acid, which is very destructive. Sawdust is no- 
toriously pernicious. Its effect is mechanical, by get- 
ting into the gills and producing suffocation. Lime is 
as deadly to salmon as to trout ; gas-works, too, are bad, 
and the arseniates thrown out from dye-houses are high- 
ly injurious. City sewage, unless in great quantities, 
will not drive them away, as is shown by salmon going 
up the Dee, and past the city of Chester, whose sewers 
empty into the river. The effect of gas-works depends, 



Trout Breeding. 2y 

perhaps, on the details of the manufacture. In great 
cities, where gas is made in large quantities, the sec- 
ondary products of the distillation, such as tar, coal oils, 
ammonia, etc., are saved and sold. But in small towns 
these products are allowed to run off in a drain, and are 
then very deleterious to fish. The Lawrence gas-house 
is reputed to have destroyed a shad fishery hard by, and 
that opposite Holyoke is said to have driven the small 
fish from the neighborhood. Whereas the dock into 
which empties the drain of the Boston north-end gas- 
works, is noted as a good place to catch smelts (Os- 
merus viridescens)." 

The Commissioners then, thirty-three years ago, be- 
lieved in the theory that the effect of sawdust on trout is 
mechanical, a belief which I do not share. In the re- 
port of the Ohio Fish Commission for 1873 they say : 

"Deleterious substances prevent the increase of fishes. 
The habit of throwing all the offal and waste material 
from factories into the river, not only prevents the in- 
crease, but actually destroys myriads of fishes annually. 
The waste discharged into the river from distilleries 
often destroys millions of fish; the waste discharges 
from paper mills consist of lime and other alkalies; 
from woolen mills the w^aste is mostly refuse dye stuffs, 
containing acids in various chemical combinations; 
from tanneries, acids, etc. The gas tar from gas estab- 
lishments, while not absolutely poisonous, most ef- 
fectually destroys the flavor of the fish and unfits them 
for table use. The gas works in the city of Columbus 
discharges the gas tar into the Scioto. What effect this 
has up on 'scale' fish we do not know, not having heard 
any complaint from the fishermen. During the winter 
of 1872-73, a large quantity of cat-fish were observed 
stranded on the 'riffles' several miles south of the city. 



2S Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

A Mr. Fisher picked up a 'two-horse load' of them and 
brought them into the city, and sold them within a very 
few hours. When cooked and brought upon the table 
they were found to be exceedingly unpalatable, tasting 
and smelling as though they had been thoroughly sat- 
urated with coal tar." 

Under the head of "Sewerage Reform" the New 
York Tribune lately said : 

''We have had occasion now and then to comment 
upon and to commend the action of the Connecticut 
courts in awarding damages to persons who complained 
that their use of brooks and rivers had been prevented 
or impaired by the pollution of those streams with sew- 
age. Sentences have been passed, if we remember cor- 
rectly, upon several individuals or corporations, and 
upon at least one municipality, for such pollution, and 
various other concerns and places have been impelled 
to mend their ways. All this was, as we have hitherto 
said, exceedingly gratifying. We believe that a similar 
spirit of self-defence on the part of aggrieved persons 
the land over would work a veritable revolution in be- 
half of health and cleanliness. 

"But Connecticut has not been content with that. A 
State Commission was appointed to investigate the sub- 
ject and report thereon. It has done so, and its report 
is instructive and suggestive. It states that all the towns 
and cities of the State which have sewer systems, ex- 
cepting four or five, discharge their sewage into run- 
ning streams or tidal harbors. The results are that the 
water is contaminated, the health of the people endan- 
gered, fish are destroyed, ice is made unfit for use, 
streams are made unsightly, and serious loss is inflicted 
upon the owners of riparian lands. All that was known 
pretty well before. It has been urged by the Tribune 



Trout Breeding. 29 

for years, in season and out of season. It is, however, 
gratifying to have it formally and in detail affirmed by 
official authority. 

"The Commission does more than merely to report. 
It makes recommendations. One of these is that the 
pouring of foul sewage into streams be absolutely for- 
bidden by law, and another is that all cities and towns 
be similarly compelled to purify their sewage, in accord- 
ance with State rules and to a State standard. Those 
are both perfectly reasonable and sound, and it is to be 
hoped they will speedily be enacted into law. Then, we 
have no doubt, the law will be enforced, as they have a 
habit of doing in Connecticut, and what is now an abom- 
inable nuisance will be abated. 

"The same evils exist elsewhere. They are due to the 
same causes. They ought to be dealt with in the same 
way. The same law that governs Piper's Brook should 
be applied to the Passaic River and to every river and 
brook in the land. There is no more precious gift of 
nature than pure water. It is abundantly given in this 
part of the world in springs and streams. It is intol- 
erable that men should defile and destroy it simply 
through laziness or shiftlessness or through pecuniary 
meanness. Every community and every individual es- 
tablishment should be compelled to dispose of its un- 
clean refuse in a manner not injurious to its neighbors. 
Connecticut is proceeding on exactly the right lines. It 
would be a blessed good thing if every other State in the 
Union would follow her example." 

The time has come when manufacturers, whether of 
lumber, paper, coal-oil or other things which are in- 
jurious to fish, should be required to take care of their 
refuse. It may cost them something, but that is no con- 
cern of ours, who believe that the rights of the public 



30 Modern FisJiculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

should be considered before the convenience of a few 
manufacturers. 

A WORD ABOUT TROUT. 

As there are "many men of many minds/' so there are 
many trouts of many kinds, and I use the word "troutsV 
in the plural because they are entitled to be so spoken of. 
On the Atlantic coast of America we have the native 
brook and lake trouts and the introduced brown trout 
of Europe, the rainbow trout and the "cut-throat trout" 
from the West, the latter so called from a red mark on 
its throat ; while on the Pacific slope there is a number of 
trouts : two species discovered by Admiral Beardslee 
last year — but I might get in a muddle if I tried to name 
them all. 

To begin with, our brook and lake trout, the lat- 
ter miscalled "salmon trout," are not trout at all. Some 
twenty years or more ago when we sent our revered 
brook trout to England, our American anglers were in- 
dignant at being told that it was not a trout but a char. 
They had never heard of a char and within a year or so 
afterward, when they had learned that a char was a 
higher form of trout, with finer scales and requiring 
colder water, they cooled down and accepted the dictum 
of the anglers and scientists who live on the other side 
of the great damp spot. 

The fact is that the true trouts have the dentition of 
the salmon and comparatively coarse scales. The brown 
trout, rainbow trout, and probably all the black-spotted 
trout of the Pacific coast are true trouts, and are in- 
cluded in the genus Sahno, while our two eastern brook 
and lake species and the red-spotted "Dolly Varden" 
trout of the West are cliars and in the genus Salvelinus^ 



Trout Breeding. 31 

which is Germanized latin for "Httle salmon." A name 
is not a little thing, even if a rose by any other name 
would smell as sweet. We should have only one name 
for one fish, but with our great wealth of fishes I know 
of but three which bear the same name from Maine to 
California and from Alinnesota to Texas, and those are 
the eel, the shad and the sturgeon. 

There is a fish in England known as a salmon-trout. 
There is no fish in America of that species and conse- 
quently none entitled to the name. The lake trout is 
miscalled "salmon trout" in the Adirondacks, and, 
worse yet, the last part of the name is dropped and the 
fish is called "salmon." This is almost as much of a 
barbarism as applying the name "salmon" to the pike- 
perch in the Susquehanna, and "trout" to the black bass 
in the South. 

The lake trout, properly so called, is known as 
"lunge," "togue," and perhaps by other names in New 
England, from Maine to Connecticut, but those names 
will die out in time. What is here said of trout breed- 
ing will be applicable for brook trout, rainbow and 
brown trout, lake trout and salmon. The other Salmon- 
idcr, whitefish, smelts, etc., will be treated of under the 
proper headings. 



HOW NATURE DOES IT. 

As soon as the waters begin to feel the first chill of au- 
tumn some trout leave the deeper waters and start up 
stream to find the gravel beds. Usually the males are 
at the spawning place a week or more in advance of the 
females, for pairing has not yet taken place. Something 
tells the young trout of last spring's hatch, which will 



^2 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

not breed until another year, to go to th^ spawning 
grounds also, to feed upon that most delicious piscine 
delicacy, the eggs of trout. 

When the females arrive the pairing begins, and our 
male char, which we have always called a trout, and al- 
ways wall, although we know better but have a love for 
the name, in his full w^ar paint, his belly now nearly 
black, with bright crimson on his lower sides and his 
back beginning to change from oliv2 green to buff, his 
lewder jaw — if he is over two years old — with a fleshy 
tip which prevents his mouth from entirely closing, is 
now ready to do battle with any rival. The i:se of the 
hooked lower jaw of the male trout and salmon is not 
fully understood. Some one has said that it was for 
grasping the female in order to help her to extrude the 
eggs, but he does no such thing. Many days I have 
lain on the loose boards covering the spawning races of 
my trout ponds in western New York in order to see 
the spawn actually cast and im.pregnated, and I watched 
one pair of trout eleven mornings before my curiosity 
was gratified, and I afterward saw the operation four 
times without such weary w^atching, for I knew that 
courtship and nest-making preceded spawning by many 
days. In no case did the male assist her delivery in any 
way. 

This is what I saw. The female seemed indifferent 
to the attentions of her mate. He chose her and drove 
off all others, fighting savagely at times and biting the 
sides of his rivals so that the scratches of his teeth could 
be seen, and several males died from the fungus which 
attacked the w^ounds. He would not allow another fe- 
male to come too near the nest. He took no part in mak- 
ing the nest, but kept his place in the stream by her side 
when she was quiet, usually with his head alongside her 



Trout Breeding. 33 

middle. Suddenly she would start, turn on her side 
and whip the gravel with her tail until her exertions 
moved her forv/ard of the nest, and in this way a clean 
spot was made a foot in diameter and about five inches 
deep. After each sweeping of the gravel, and at other 
times, her mate would move fo;-ward and rub his side 
against her nose, all the time quivering with excitement. 
After several days of nest-making, the moment came — 
she bent her body into the nest and seemed to rub for- 
ward on the gravel, and discharged some eggs. He 
was at her side and fertilized them at the moment. I 
could plainly see the milt. Young trout got the scent 
of the eggs and crowded up to feast on them, but the 
old fellow was on guard, while she whipped some gravel 
over her treasures. Some two hours later the same pair 
repeated the performance and deposited more eggs, but 
I watched them the next morning without seeing more 
spawning and do not know whether she laid all her eggs 
in two batches or not. The nest was covered up and 
the fish remained about it for two or three days. 

When this takes place in a stream, the eggs are im- 
perfectly covered. The mother cannot see that some 
eggs are fanned away by the action of her tail. 
Another pair of trout may come and choose the same 
spot for a nest and whip the eggs out, to be devoured 
by the yearling trout, chubs, dace or other fishes, for the 
spawning season is from October to March. A freshet 
may come and smother the eggs with sediment ; ducks, 
eels and rats will dig in the gravel for them, and fungus 
from a few dead eggs may kill the lot. Nature pro- 
vides for this loss by giving the trout many eggs, not as 
many as most fishes have, but enough to keep up the 
stock under favorable circumstances, so that if each pair 
succeed in having a pair reach maturity it is all that na- 



34 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

lure requires. In such an operation as I have described 
not over ten per cent, of the eggs are fertiUzed, because 
the milt fails to reach them, and not two per cent, hatch 
and live until they are ready to take food. 

We beat nature in hatching fish as we do in growing 
corn or cotton. We impregnate 95 per cent, of the eggs 
and raise about 80 per cent, of the hatch, because we 
protect both eggs and young from all enemies. 

In order to make up for infant mortality the cod, the 
eel and some other fishes lay many millions of eggs, 
seemingly to provide food for other aquatic life, just as 
plants provide seeds for birds and mice and still enough 
escape to keep up the species. The fewer the casualties 
to which a race is exposed the smaller the number of 
eggs or young which it needs to produce m order to 
cover the necessary losses. In fish generally it takes at 
least a hundred thousand eggs each year to keep up the 
average of the species. In frogs and other amphibians, 
a few hundred are amply sufficient. Reptiles oftenxlay 
only a much smaller number. In birds, which hatch 
their own eggs and feed their young, from ten to two 
eggs per annum are quite sufficient to replenish the 
earth. Among mammals, three or four at a birth is a 
rare number, and many of the larger sorts produce one 
calf or foal at a time only. In the human race at large, 
a total of five or six children for each married couple 
during a whole lifetime makes up sufficiently for infant 
mortality and all other sources of loss, though among 
utter savages a far higher rate is usually necessary, 

EGGS OF TROUT. 

Eggs of the trout are comparatively few in number 
and of large size. They vary more than the eggs of any 



Trout Breeding. 35 

fish that I know of, ranging from five to ten to the 
Hnear inch, which would make a difference of from 125 
to 1,000 in a cubic inch if they could be arranged in 
layers : but as they would lie closer, like shot, the differ- 
ence would be greater. To get the number of eggs 
taken from several trout it was my custom to measure 
one ounce in a graduating glass and count them and 
then m.easure the rest and multiply. A trout will spawn 
at 18 months old ; it may then be from four to ten inches 
long and its eggs will be in proportion and vary from 
fifty to a hundred or more. A year later it may yield 
over a thousand, dependent on its growth and condition. 
I have taken nearly 5,000 eggs from a trout which might 
have weighed four pounds, so that the old formula of 
"a thousand eggs to the pound" is not a rule. From a 
four-pound codfish I should expect 400,000 eggs. The 
small eggs naturally produce small fish, but abnormally 
large eggs do not seem to produce any better fish than 
those of moderate size. For good, strong fry a trout at 
its second spawning, when t\vo and a half years old, is 
my choice, and I would never voluntarily keep a trout 
above that age. I say "vohuitarily" because when in 
charge of a State hatchery the Commissioners and the 
people wanted to see big trout, and I had them up to 
five pounds, and over, but they were of little use as 
breeders and ate their heads off every month, and their 
eggs were almost worthless. 



MARKETABLE TROUT. 

There is another reason why I would not keep any 
trout after it had spawned the second time and recov- 
ered the next spring, and that is this : It is too big for 



36 Modern Pishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

market. An angler likes to capture a big trout to show, 
but he prefers to eat the smaller ones. Many years of at- 
tendance at Blackford's annual "trout openings" in Ful- 
ton Market on the first day of the legal trout season has 
shown that the desirable sizes are from three to five to 
the pound. These are fried or boiled with the head left 
on and are served whole to a guest. If a little larger 
they would have to be cut and served in portions, while 
those over two pounds should be boiled ; and that is not 
what the epicure wants, because if his fish is to be boiled 
he would prefer cod, salmon, lake trout or many other 
fishes, for the idea of having brook trout served other- 
wise than fried or broiled never occurs to him, and he 
likes them whole. 

For some years Mr. Gilbert, of the Old Colony Trout 
Ponds, and Mr. Hoxsie, of Rhode Island, have agitated 
the question of selling the trout raised by breeders at 
such season as they may choose. In the report of the 
American Fisheries Society for 1895, page 80, Mr. 
Hoxsie said : " . . . Is there not some way in 
which the man who makes a business of raising trout, 
for what little money there is in it, can be allowed to ship 
them into New York to the market whenever they are 
fit for it? The law seems a little unjust. If I were in 
Rhode Island and raised chickens and turkeys I could 
send them at any tiiiie, but cannot send trout to New 
York, it being the market for what I produce. One 
year New York passed a law that we should not get 
fish [there] until the first day of May. I am not doing 
a large business, but that year we did not pay our ex- 
penses by about $1,500. We have shipped already this 
season over six tons of brook trout. The price has been 
low, but we cannot govern that if we don't get fish there 
until April i6th. I would rather have February, March 



Trout Breeding. 37 

and April ; I can then sell all I can raise, but later in the 
season people have gone out of town for the sum- 
mer." 

Hon. Herschel Whitaker, of the Michigan Fish Com- 
mission, voiced the sentiment of those present when he 
said : "A close season for fish is for their protection 
during the period of reproduction, and that is the only 
interpretation to be given to it. It may work hardship 
for those engaged in raising and selling fish, if the law 
precludes them from following their occupation. It is 
to the interest of the whole people that the close season 
should be established for the protection of fish during 
the season of reproduction, and the interest of the indi- 
vidual should be subservient to the larger interest." 

I agree with Mr. Whitaker. I am a fishculturist by 
profession and an angler from choice. The opening of 
our markets to pond-bred trout would open the gates to 
all the poachers of trout streams in the country, and it 
would be impossible to keep their illegal catch from the 
markets. The raising of chickens and turkeys is not a 
parallel case, for they do not exist in a wild state in the 
East. 

I have listened to these arguments year after year, 
but have taken little part in them. Here are my heretical 
views : The brook trout ranks as a first-class table fish 
in cities removed from the salt water. In New York, 
Boston and other seaboard cities it has a sentimental 
value and sells for 30 cents to $1 per pound. The sale is 
mainly to city anglers who fish for the trout at the 
opening season, if they can. get away, and who buy 
the fish to revive old camp memories more than 
anything else. They have them cooked at the club or 
take them home and try to make their wives enthuse 
over them, just as I buy venison chops every year and 



3^ Modern Fishculture in fresh ana Salt Water. 

recall camp scenes without getting my family to enjoy 
them as I do. I don't believe that any amount of trout 
worth considering could be sold in New York a week 
before the legal opening, for reasons given above. 

As I have said, the demand for brook trout in sea- 
board cities is largely a sentimental one, based on the 
long trip into the wilderness, the return to the half-sav- 
age life of primitive man and the appetite which comes 
from a day's tramp, when trout must be cleaned and 
cooked before the hungry angler eats ; and then he re- 
members a fish that is half raw^ and half burned as one 
of the greatest delicacies which ever came his way. In 
his club or cafe, when his appetite was clamorous for 
something, no matter w'hat — when he could eat a mule 
and chase the rider — he W'Ould send the fish back to the 
kitchen ; if he washes to eat trout he wants it properly 
cooked — when he is in the city. 

I am not an iconoclast. On the contrary, it is my na- 
ture to be a hero worshiper, but the statements made 
above are what I believe, and 1 will venture to incur the 
wrath of the angler who takes his trout in the rushing 
waters of the brook by saying: It is the fashion, my 
dear brother — and I can say with Walton, "I am, sir, 
a brother of the angle" — for you to decry all pond, 
or liver-fed trout, as unfit to eat. This entirely accords 
with what I have said before, and is just what you might 
be expected to do ; but as Prince Hal says to Falstaf¥ : 
"Mark how plain a tale shall put you down.'" During 
the years that I have attended Blackford's trout open- 
ings I have eaten trout from many places, wild and 
liver fed, and as they w-ere marked by mutilations of the 
caudal fin it was interesting to hear the comments of 
the dozen or more anglers each year. 

It is my opinion that a plump liver-fed trout is the 



Trout Breeding. ^g 

equal of any other trout for the table. I like an occa- 
sional breakfast of calve's liver and bacon, and why is 
not good, tender beef liver-as good for a trout ? Why is 
not a diet of liver as good as worms, snails, bugs, cater- 
pillars, mice and small trout? This, as I have said, is 
sentiment, pure and simple. It is the romance that the 
angler weaves about his beautiful fish which he traveled 
miles for and worked hard to get after he got there. 
Divested of this sentiment there would be no fancy 
prices for brook trout. It would take its place in the 
m.arkets with other food fishes and would drop behind 
some of them. As an angler's fish it is a noble one, and 
it is one of the best of fresh water fishes for the table, 
if it is not muddy. 

When a boy the perch, bullheads and suckers from the 
mill pond seemed to be the best of fishes, and I did not 
understand why some people turned up their noses at 
them and preferred the fish of salt water. That knowl- 
edge came later, and outside of the whitefish of the great 
lakes, and its relatives, there is no fresh water fish that 
I care to buy more than once a year. "If this be trea- 
son, make the most of it." 

In camp I declare that the brook trout just now fried 
with salt pork, or roasted before the fire, are the finest 
fish that ever went down my oesophagus, but when I 
am only half hungry in a New York cafe there is a 
change of opinion. 

Yet, after writing this, there is a remembrance of 
camp life that crops up "like the faint, exquisite music 
of a dream," and a memory of trout fried in bear fat is 
enjoyed for a moment and is followed by the greatest 
treat of my life as memory harks back to some plump 
trout cooked in beaver fat with a beaver's tail frying 
among them. That was a dish to be remembered, and 



40 Modem Fishcuttiire in Fresh and Salt tVaief. 

the greater the lapse of time the more distinct is the 
memory. 



CHAPTER II. 



IN THE HATCHING HOUSE. 



Trout can be hatched without a house, but not as well 
as in one. Eggs may be procured and put in the gravel 
of a spring or of a running stream — in "redds,'' as nests 
are called across the water — but the dangers they meet 
there have been told, and not one in fifty will become a 
trout. They may be hatched in covered troughs which 
have graveled bottoms, but frost may interfere with the 
level or may stop the water supply ; inquisitive persons 
may replace the covers carelessly and let in sunshine, or 
other things may interfere with the success of the ven- 
ture. By all means do your hatching under a roof ix 
you wish to succeed. 

A house 20x30 feet will contain 12 troughs, placed 
by twos, with a single one at each end, and in single 
layers of eggs will have a capacity of 300,000 eggs 
which can be hatched and the fry fed in the troughs for 
a month or more. The capacity can be increased four 
or five times, but the fry must be removed before feed- 
ing. The house should have a cupola or an airshaft at 
the top to carry ofif the vapor, which would otherwise 
condense on the walls and windows. Brick walls will 
absorb moisture, freeze and crumble, and a lining of 
yellow pine ceiling with the same material for the floor 
is best because it swells less than other available woods, 



Trout Breeding. 41 

and a coat of spar varnish makes it bright and attract- 
ive. When I began operations at Cold Spring Harbor, 
N. Y., in January, 1883, I had an old brick house, 20x 
30, on the hill ; the water from there went into an old 
tumble-down wooden building of the same size and 
water from a lower reservoir, and it was practically a 
fed troughs on the upper floor, while below^ we took 
three-story hatchery. Then, when the brown trout eggs 
came from Germany I had to put troughs outdoors and 
give them water from tne lower floor. It was all hastily 
improvised, for there had been no time to prepare for the 
work ; but I had then fifteen years' experience and knew 
how to care for the eggs until troughs and trays could 
be made. 

Salmon eggs came in crates from Maine, trout eggs 
from Caledonia, N. Y., and from Germany, which 
taxed the new hatchery beyond its capacity ; but I 
brought over a lot of poor troughs from Roslyn, made 
under like conditions the winter before for salmon 
work, and had more made. The only eggs which were 
injured by this imperfect preparation were some that 
were in the outdoor trough, where frost and visitors 
interfered. One night the frost choked the outlets on 
the upper floor of the wooden building and the water 
overflowed the troughs and froze two feet thick on the 
outside of the building, so that we had to chop the ice to 
open the door. The eggs were heavy and received no 
damage, but it was fortunate that the water supply was 
not stopped. 

The hatchery may be an inexpensive shed, but the 
floor should be solidly supported, so that there is no 
iar to the troughs when people walk about. Windows 
should be plenty, but provided with heavy roller shades, 
preferably of a green color, so that light may be had 



42 Modern Fishculturc in Fresh and Salt Water. 

from all sides except when the sun may shine directly 
on the troughs or eggs. If this is not practicable then 
make covers for the troughs ; these may be hinged so as 
to lie over on the adjoining trough. 

Good, clear white pine is the best material for 
troughs, if free from sap and knots. It swells tight and 
the nails can be set up, if needed. I have used yellow 
pine, but it is hard and unyielding and is more difficult 
to make tight because it does not swell, yet it is more 
lasting than white pine. A trough of the latter is good 
for from four to eight years, and then soft spots of sap, 
or heart, begin to show ; a patch or two of one-half inch 
pine is let in, embedded in coal tar, and it goes for a year 
or two more. Troughs of yellow pine made in 1886 are 
good as ever twelve years later, yet they are unhandy to 
tack screen strips in and more so to pull a brad from. 
Where these woods cannot be obtained some native 
w^ood must be substituted. White cedar would be an 
ideal wood, if it grew large enough. 

A distributing trough running across the head of a 
series of hatching troughs has been the regulation mode 
of supply in hatcheries since they have existed, and the 
practical worker knows what a nuisance they are. Run- 
ning the length of the building, the least settling opens 
the joints, and their length forbids their being moved 
after having been built in position. Then a bit of sap- 
wood or heart in some spot will decay, and the whole 
trough will be condemned and a new one made. The 
life of such a trough may be from four to ten years, but 
it is always under suspicion of leaking at any time. I 
had one 60 feet long that lasted eight years, but was 
calked and pitched many times, and I thought of lining 
it with sheet lead of about three pounds per square foot 
and then replace the wood piece by piece, as needed. 



Trout Breeding. 43 

Watch the carpenter at every point in the making of 
troughs, and especially in the selection of the planks. 
If a bottom plank has a bit of sap-wood on the corner 
of one edge, have it put on the downward side, where 
it does not come in contact with water. If a side plank 
has a strip of sap-wood, have him put that edge on 
top, above water, for such parts are the first to decay. 
The hearts of the tree are next in order to rot, and if 
there is a heart-streak in a plank have it on the out- 
side. 

See that tlie edges of the bottom planks are not only 
all of a width, but that thev are absolutelv straight 
and the edges perfectly square. If the planks are 
i^ inches thick use twenty-penny nails, wire-nails, and 
these are 4J inches long. Have him put the nails 
2^ inches apart, and not in a straight row, but alter- 
nately up and down in order to prevent splitting the 
planks. 

These things may seem unimportant details, but 
they are worth attending to if one cares to have the 
troughs not only water-tight but also to last as many 
years as possible. 

It has been my custom to take a pair of compasses 
and mark on the lower end of each trough the year in 
which it was made. On the first trough in the frontis- 
piece may be seen the figures 1888, so made. This 
enables one to know just how long that trough has 
lived, and to judge of the defects of certain planks. It 
is a record that may be wished for in later years. 

The question of painting or tarring the outside of 
troughs may be a debatable one. The troughs look 
better for it, but I incline to think that it retains the 
moisture in the wood, and so helps to rot it. But, 
above all, have the troughs tight. 



44 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

Of course a slovenly superintendent who is content 
to have leaky troughs, a wet floor, and to slosh around 
in rubber boots, cares nothing for a leak here and there, 
any more than he does to see men spit on the floor of his 
hatchery, and it is not for him that this is written. 

The subject of dry and clean floors interested me 
years ago, and still does. My floor at Cold Spring Har- 
bor is clean, but a trough that leaks a few drops, just 
enough to show, is an annoyance. I was called to plan 
a hatchery at Bath, Steuben county, N. Y., for the State 
, in 1894. I arranged for a row of troughs on each side 
of the building, with a six-foot aisle in the middle at the 
foot of each series. The troughs were arranged by twos, 
for I would not have them in threes unless the lot was 
too small to expand the hatchery to the required capac- 
ity ; and as the water was to be brought in a six-inch iron 
pipe for some 600 feet, with a fall of about 10 feet to the 
hatchery floor, my old ideas naturally ran to having 
the pipe branch above the building and flow into two 
distributing troughs, one on each side, and to discharge 
from the hatching troughs under the floor. I had long 
used brass gate-valves in wooden supply troughs, and 
as there w^ere to be 18 troughs on each side I finally de- 
cided that the following sketch would be an improve- 
ment on any method yet devised, and I made a plan 
which I hoped to introduce, but the Commissioners got 
into a dispute and another man finished the work. 

The following are the advantages of this mode of sup- 
ply : 

1. Absolute control of the supply without a drip when 
shut down. 

2. Saving a portion of the space occupied by the sup- 
ply trough. 

3. The ease of cleaning the main pipe A by the full- 



Trout Breeding. 



45 



sized gate, which when shut entirely down causes water 
not used in the troughs to flow over the upper dam into 
the ponds. 

4. Discharging in a central ditch under the floor. 

5. Cheapness in construction and lasting a hundred 
times as long as wooden distributing troughs. 

At the Long Island station I ran the waste water back 
under the hatching troughs in four-inch soil pipes to a 
waste trough outside the building (see frontispiece), 
because the ground under the hatchery is lower than 




Improved Water Sl'pply. — A, six- 
inch pipe under building in ditch ; B. 
lower end of pipe ; C. gate to free pipe 
from sediment ; DD. waste pipes from 
troughs ; EE. floor of hatchery ; F, 
two-inch pipe to supply two troughs 

on each side of the house; GG, brass gates, i 1-4 inch, which 

is plenty, with a lo-foot head. 

the ponds outside, but at Bath the case is different and 
the arrangement shown is the best for the situation., and 
as it is a different mode of supply from any in use as 
far as I know, it seems worthy of illustration. 

The main pipe was to be pierced for nine two-inch 
uprights with "tees" to branch to each side, under the 
floor: these will bend up and over the troughs, ending 
in a "tee" with two branches and gates, which, with a 
head of several feet, will give the required flow, 



46 Modern Fishciilture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

Hatching troughs should be made with great care 
I prefer ij-inch plank, dressed both sides, which leaves 
it over an inch in thickness. Have your carpenter get 
out the bottoms of the best stuff and. of an exact width 
to a hair. This will allow screens, dams and trays to fit 
all the troughs, and you will have a standard size for 
them. Insist on this. Never nail the bottoms to the 
sides ; it takes wider bottoms, and is the wrong way to 
do it. My favorite size for a hatching trough is 14 feet 
long, 14 inches wide and eight inches deep, inside meas- 
ure. If of ij-inch stuff the side planks are 9^ inches 
wide. Lay in white lead or thick coal tar. If in white 
lead do not let it come to the surface of the bottom plank, 
for coal tar will not dry over it. Rabbet the ends in the 
bottom and sides, as shown in the cut, and you can nail 
both ways and make tight ends. 

When the troughs are made and dry coat them with 




End of Trough. 



coal tar from the gas works, thinned with spirits of tur- 
pentine. Have it so thin that it will strike in and dry in 
24 hours, in summer. Use a half-worn paint brush, and 
when dry give it a second and a third coat. Be sure 
that it is thin enough to be absorbed by the wood and 



Trout Breeding. 47 

not left as a coat of paint. After four coats the grain 
of the wood should show. A trough should be thus 
coated every summer during its life, but beware of put- 
ting it on thick, like paint. After a few coats there will 
be a gloss, but the object is to have the varnish strike 
into the wood. Coat all your woodwork and wire 
screens, dams, etc., in the hatchery, wherever water 
touches, with the thinned coal tar. Many fishculturists 
use an asphalt varnish. It is as good as coal tar, but 
while I have seen troughs coated with it, I never saw it 
applied. A barrel of coal tar, or gas tar — it's the same — 
would cost less than $2, freight and all, and last for five 
years. It is so good that I never experimented in any 
other direction. The top of the trough should be three 
feet four inches to three feet seven inches from the 
floor, according to the height of the workers, so that 
they may not stoop at their work. 



TROUGH FOR YOUNG SALMONlD^. 

In Forest and Stream of Feb. 19, 1891, Mr. William 
P. Seal makes a good suggestion. He says : "The 
idea which has suggested itself to the writer as a result 
of observation, though not of practical experience, is a 
double trough, or trough inside a trough, as shown in 
the accompanying sketch. One bottom answers for 
both, of course. Along the sides of the inside trough 
are arranged a series of angular chambers, made bv 
placing pieces of wood or metal of a required size at 
an angle from the sides, and covering the mouth or 
base of the angle with wire gauze, letting the wood 
project some little distance beyond the gauze, as shown 
in the sketche 



48 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

"Now, entering into each of these angles from the 
outer trough is a hole with a gate, by which the flow 
of water may be regulated. ""' * * The idea is to 
introduce currents of water at intervals along the en- 
tire length of the trough in such a way that the fish 




Trough for Young Salmon. 

will find a number of places with the conditions they 
prefer, instead of the single one at the head of the ordi- 
nary trough. '^ * *." 

Mr. Seal gives no explanation of the letters used in 
the diagram. As I understand it they are as follows : 
BB, troughs ; F, wood or metal angles ; W, wire gauze. 
If the inner trough could be made to sit so flat on the 
bottom that no little heads could wedge under it, this 
plan would be good. There is no record of the use of 
such a trough. 



WHY DO WE USE COAL TAR? 

That is a very proper question, and to answer it I will 
have to tell a story. Raw white pine troughs put in the 
hatchery and fed with water soon begin to exude a jelly. 
I have taken 'sheets of it from the bottom and sides that 
were J of an inch thick. This is a form of turpentine, 
and it will kill trout eggs and embryo trout, every one 
of them. When I visited the Caledonia hatchery in the 
spring of 1868, the troughs were lined with 10x12 win- 



Trout Breeding. 49 

dow glass laid in white lead, and there were tront eggs 
on gravel laid on the glass. The swelling of the trough 
left patches of bare pine and there the jelly asserted 
itself. I tried it with the same result, and lost many 

Mr. Livingston Stone obtanied a patent for a trough 
of charred wood, June 20, 1871. This solved the prob- 
lem, for fungus will not grow on charcoal, and in an 
emergency, in January, 1882— when Prof. Baird sent me 
a lot of salmon eggs to hatch for the Hudson, and I 
hustled around and got Thomas Chapham's disused 
hatchery at Roslyn, Long Lsland— I had a lot of cheap 
troughs made and the weather was too cold for the tar 
to dry and started in. The eggs were far advanced and 
began to hatch in the spring water, which was warmer 
than the air ; for I had kept the eggs in the packages 
just above the freezing point. The first lot showed the 
disease which we know as "blue-belly," and I saw that 
the wood was too raw. 1 :ook trough after trough, dried 
them, filled them with straw and coal tar, set them on 
end to make a chimney and charred them deeply. It 
was a success ; the remaining salmon did well, but the 
charcoal was dirty to the hands. 

A year or more later I read somewhere of the use of 
coal tar for troughs and tried it. It was perfect, but 
the name of the man who suggested it is not known to 
me. I think he was a Frenchman. Of course, Seth 
Green claimed to know all about it, for Seth had a way 
of discounting all discoveries, as he did in the case of 
dry impregnation, which we will come to later. 

The coal tar should be thoroughly dried before water 
touches it, for it will not harden under water, nor over 
paint nor white lead. With three thin coats there will 
be no more flavor of tar to the water in the trough than 



5o Modern Fishcultiire in Fresh and Salt Water. 

if it was in glass. Asphalt varnish is equally good, as 
I have seen, but coal tar was always so handy and so 
perfectly satisfactory that I never used anything else. 

Coat all troughs, trays and everything which comes in 
contact with the water every summer and they will last 
long and be sweet and clean. 



HATCHING TRAYS. 

These should be made ^ inch narrower than the 
troughs. Make them of f x^ inch stuff, to lie flat — /. e., 
the half-inch to be the depth. Heavier wood will float 
the trays. Halve the corners so that they can be nailed 
both ways, and make the length as you wish. A 14- foot 
trough wants about six inches for the water to spend 
its downward force in, and as much for the lower dam. 
Seven screens of 22 inches each, outside measure, will 
be plenty for a trough of that length. 

Have your wire-cloth for the trays especially woven. 
As the trays will be 13 J inches wide and the selvege 
will be irregular, have the wire-cloth 13 inches and as 
long as may be needed. For trout let it be in this way : 
Meshes J inch long by ^ wide, the length of the mesh 
to run across the trough. The warp, which runs the 
long way, being of fine wire. No. 24, and double, going 
over and under the heavier woof, or filling, of No. 18 
Avire. This gives us the long mesh across the trough 
and the eggs do not wash and bunch in the current. 
The embryo fish will then drop through the meshes. 
Put the wire-cloth on the frames with small double- 
pointed tacks, and put one in each corner of the frame 
for a leg, in order that the water may flow under the 
tray, as well as over it. 



Trout Breeding. 5^ 

New wire-cloth does not take tar readily ; put it al- 
ternately in water and in air and slightly rust it and it 
will catch on at once. For the trays a well-worn paint 
brush is best ; and I have taken new brushes, tied them 
down and cut them off until they were stiff enough to 
use on wire-cloth. Do all this work in summer, in the 
open air, and let it dry thoroughly before giving a sec- 
ond coat. Do this each year and look out for every 
rust spot and kill it. 

Don't use copper wire for hatching. Copper will do 
for outlet screens for ponds, but it will kill eggs. Have 
nothing to do with galvanized wire unless at outlets, for 
the same reason'. I've learned all this by experiment and 
give you the result withou cost. The glass grilles 
which are used in Europe a..^ good ; nothing is cleaner 
than glass, but the first cost and the breakage make it 
objectionable. Wire trays are just as good, and much 
cheaper. 

Some years ago, to my surprise, Mr. Frank N. Clark 
announced that he had gone back to the use of gravel 
for hatching trout. When we used gravel we sifted it 
so that it was not larger than the trout eggs, running 
through a No. lO screen to get rid of larger pieces and 
tlien through a No. 14 to work out the sand. Even 
then some eggs would get into the gravel and die, grow 
fungus and become a nuisance, while under the gravel 
was a black mess full of sulphureted hydrogen which 
smelt to heaven when the gravel was stirred. Knowing 
that Mr. Clark is always sincere in all his statements 
— although we often disagree on some trivial point — 1 
wrote him asking for his reasons for using gravel, at 
the same time telling him that I wished to publish what 
he said. He writes as follows : 



52 Modern Fishciiltiire in Fresh and Salt Water. 

"NoRTHViLLE, MiCH., Jan. 21, 1899. 
"My Dear Mather : I do not know how to describe 
to you my reasons for using gravel in handling the 
eggs of the Lochlevcn and the brook trout, other than 
the fact that my motive is to employ the method which 
will insure the largest percentage of eyed eggs, and by 
the use of gravel we certainly have obtained better re- 
sults. We use gravel only for the eggs taken from the 
parent fish at this station, and then only until the eye 
spots appear, when they are siphoned off the gravel and 
placed on trays. By actual records at Northville, we 
have met with from 10 to 15 per cent, greater loss by 
placing the green eggs on wire cloth instead of on 
gravel. What there is about the gravel which causes a 
better percentage is more than I can tell. It may be due 
to some chemical affinity between the wire trays and the 
water here at Northville, producing a combination in- 
jurious to the eggs, but it is certainly not imagination. 
It is proven by actual records. Cordially yours, 

"Frank N. Clark." 

What Mr. Clark says about the water and the wire 
trays reminds me that at Cold Spring Harbor zinc- 
lined w^aste troughs would be eaten full of pinholes in 
one season by chemical action, while at other stations 
zinc lasts a long time. 



preparing for hatching. 

Everything should be ready and the v/ater running 
through the troughs a week or two before an egg is 
taken. Put in a horizontal screen at the head of the 
trough one inch belcv^ its top. Let it be the width of 
the trough and about 5 inches long ; lay it on cleats, or 



Trout Breeding. S3 

suspend it in any other way. Tliis is to stop all gam- 
marus or plants, which may clog the lower screen but 
cannot clog this one because it is above high- water level. 
Gammarus are good trout food, but are not desirable in 
troughs, because they may kill delicate embryo trout, 
although they do not seem to hurt the eggs. They are 
scavengers, and will eat a dead embryo ; but it is best 
for the fishculturist to be his own scavenger in the 
troughs. 

At the lower end of the trough arrange to carry your 
outflow straight under the floor or back under the 
trough, as may be convenient ; but I prefer to have the 
cutlet hole in the bottom, and not in the end of the 
trough. Put a one and one-half inch "sink plug," to be 
obtained of a plumber, two inches from the end, first 
filing out the cross bars ; then throw away the stopper. 
A short tin tube soldered to the lower end will prevent 
all slopping over into the pipe which takes away the 
water. 

An inch above the hole put a one-half inch strip on the 
sides to hold a dam ; and an inch above this put two sim- 
ilar strips for the outlet screen to slide in. Three small 
wire brads will hold the strips in place. See cut on 
page 46, which shows how the end of the trough is 
let in. Some carpenters prefer to let the sides and 
bottoms of troughs project an inch beyond the ends, 
but that is one of those minor matters of detail that 
are not of enough importance to argue about. 

Now make your one and one-half inch dams, and also 
some six-inch dams to fit the same place, and mark them 
with a chisel with the number of the trough, for they 
must be water-tight on bottom and sides. The narrow 
dams are to be used until hatching begins, and then the 
deeper ones are to be put in, and the screens also. Fit 



Trout Breeding. 55 

the screen tight, especially at the bottom, or heads and 
tails will be wedged in there, and the owners of those 
heads and tails will die. You will believe more of this 
the second season when you see how small a pinhole 
an embryo trout can commit suicide in. Many times I 
have sifted fine sand along the bottom of such a screen, 
to keep tails, heads and parts of sacs from getting 
under it. 

This outlet screen may be of finely perforated tin, one- 
sixteenth of an inch. Mr. Frank N. Clark used this and 
recommended it to me, but I did not like it because in a 
given area the holes were the smallest part. I prefer 
No. 20 copper wire cloth, or, if of iron wire, to be 
tarred. No. 16. In wire cloth the "holes" are the largest 
part of the area, and they last the longest. 

Now that all is ready in the trough, mount it on 
carpenter's "horses" — three, if the trough is not over 
fifteen feet long — and have it exactly level across the 
bottom, but give it at least half an inch fall in its length. 
This fall is merely for convenience in cleaning, nothing 
more. 

I prefer the trays to set flat, on carpet-tack legs, as de- 
scribed, instead of having them raised on their "hind 
legs," as some others place them ; but this is a minor 
point, not worth discussing. 

Let the water run through : tighten troughs after a 
day or two by a nail-set and a hammer ; and here is 
where you will learn why the sides of a trough should be 
nailed to the bottom, for convenience in tightening as 
well as for increased stiffness. 

Put the hatching trays in the troughs, weight them 
down with stones until they cease to float, and then you 
may sit down, light your pipe and say: "Now bring 
on your eggs !" 



56 Modern Fishculture in Fresh mid Salt Water. 

Filters. — If filters are necessary they may be made 
in wide troughs with coarse wire screens at the upper 
end and finer ones belOw, ending in cheese-cloth or flan- 



DI.ST /^ IB or/ A/ G 



TROU a H 



I 

J5oo;j-. 



i> i' 



2' b" 



I'b" 



B 



/ 



LTm 



30 r££T 
Plan of Hatchery with 12 Troughs; capacity 30,000 each in 
single layer. A, sink for washing; B, closet; S, stove; 
WW, windows. 

nel. Or the water may flow through sand and gravel, 
according to the nature of the material to be filtered out. 
There should be a screen at the head of each trough to 
prevent stoppage at the outlet. 



CHAPTER III. 



TROUT EGGS. DISTINGUISHING SEX IN FISHES. 



It is with the fishes as with the birds : some species 
show sexual differences at a glance at all times, some 



Trout Breeding. 57 

only during the breeding season, and others are so 
nearly similar that except for the protruding abdomen 
of the gravid female the sex can be distinguished only 
by dissection. 

A few, as the sharks and rays, have as distinct marks 
of sex, as do mammals, such as "claspers," spines on 
head and fins, etc. ; others, as the Einhiotocoids, or vi- 
viparous fishes, have a different structure of the anal fin, 
while the great majority of fishes, especially the fresh- 
water kinds, have merely a brilliancy or intensity of 
color during the pairing season, which is invariably con- 
fined to the males. There is a very common notion 
prevalent that goldfish can be distinguished by the 
dorsal fin, that of the male being shorter than that of 
the female — that is, having not so many rays ; but this 
is entirely groundless. The dorsal fins of this species, 
Carassitis auratiis, are very variable, as in fact the entire 
fish is, but this variation does not indicate sex in the 
least, and I do not hesitate to say that this fish is one 
whose sex cannot be told except by dissection, save 
when the female is distended with eggs. 

The little Cyprinodotits, killey fishes, show during 
the spring and summer such great differences between 
the dandy male and its quaker-like mate that they might 
be mistaken for different species, while most of the 
percoids, as perch, bass, sunfishes, etc., simply show a 
difference in the intensitv of the colors. In some of the 
sticklebacks, as Eucalia inconstans, Jordan, the male is 
gorgeous in red and green during the breeding season, 
while the more sober bridegroom of the four-spined 
variety, Apcltcs qiiadracus, contents himself with a 
small pair of crimson ventral fins. ]\Iost of the cyprin- 
oids, at other times indistinguishable, can be recognized 
during the breeding season by brightly-colored fins. 



58 Modern Fishcultiirc in Fresh and Salt Water. 

The same may be said of the brook trout; but trout 
breeders learn to separate the sexes at other seasons by 
their general appearance without being able to describe 
exactly how. An old male trout is readily determined 
by its lank sides and general air of a dilapidated roue, 
but a vigorous male of three years old before putting 
on his autumnal dress is very like the female, and is 
only to be distinguished by a trained eye, and even then 
mistakes occur. It is a matter of doubt if the yearlings 
can be separated by sexes with anything approximating 
a certainty. The males of a northern sea fish closely 
related to the smelt, and known as the capelin, Mallotus 
villosus, are said to be provided "with a ridge of closely- 
set, brush-like scales, by the aid of which two males, one 
on each side, hold the female, while she runs with great 
swiftness on the sandy beach and there deposits her 
spawn," a clear case of polyandry, which is exceptional 
among fishes, which vary more in their methods of re- 
production than the members of any other class. The 
well-known hooked lower jaw of the male Atlantic sal- 
mon, Salnio salar, is only a nuptial appendage, which 
is afterward absorbed ; but in several of the Pacific 
species of salmon this is a permanent mark of the male,, 
and from this feature they have received from Profes- 
sors Gill and Jordan the generic name of Oncorhyn- 
chiis, and have been removed, in their revision of the 
Salmonidce, from the genus Sahno. To this genus be- 
long the so-called "California salmon,'' now choui- 
cha of the new nomenclature, and four other species. 

Among the strikingly formed and brilliantly colored 
tropical fishes there are often marked differences in 
the sexes, both in structure and color, and one known 
as the gemmeous dragonet, Callionyrnous lyra, has been 
described by Linnaeus, and several subsequent natural- 



Trout Breeding. 59 

ists, as two distinct species, as they not only differ in 
the size and shape of the fins and the hues of the body, 
but also in the proportional size of the head and mouth, 
and evtrn ni the position of the eyes. As has been 
shown, there are slight, if any. differences between the 
sexes of our fresh water forms, except at the breeding 
season, when they are manifested principally by color. 
There is, however, always a difference in size, for in no 
species with which I am familiar does the male fish ever 
attain the extreme bulk that the adult female does. 
This difference is more remarkable in some species 
than in others, but I do not hesitate to assert that it 
exists in all. In the little "Killey," referred to above, 
the female is twice as large as her mate, and the striped 
bass, or Rock, is another example ; all the large ones, 
from forty to a hundred pounds, or more, are females. 
How large the male rockfish is found I cannot say, but 
I incline to the opinion that specimens weighing above 
thirty pounds are rare. 

The male brook trout begins to grow a brighter red 
on the sides as the water cools in October, in New 
York, and as he ripens this becomes brilliant. Then, 
if not old enough to be disfigured by a pronounced 
hooked jaw, he is one of the most beautiful of all our 
fresh- water fishes. If. however, he does not find a 
mate, or is driven from her by a stronger fish, his un- 
expended force manifests itself by another change. 
The crimson side fades into a drab, or buff, and the 
flat edge of the w^hite belly is bordered with a broad 
black line. Such a fish will yield milt at the slightest 
touch, and it is the best of all milt, for it is dead ripe. 
Large males, those of three or four pounds, seldom get 
in this state, and I don't care for them as breeders. 

If I were breeding trout as a private enterprise, np 



6o Modem Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

fish over three years old would be kept. That is, a fish 
hatched in March, 1890, would spawn in November, 
1891, when twenty months old, and would give more or 
less eg-gs, according to her growth, but should be just 
the right size for market. A few thrifty breeders can 
be kept with profit another year, when they will yield 
three or four times the amount of eggs that they did a 
twelvemonth ago ; but then they should go to market 
the next spring and make room for younger stock, for 
their market value is decreasing in proportion to their 
size, as I have shown under the head of "Marketable 
Trout." 



TAKING TROUT EGGS. 

In an old English cook-book by a Mrs. Glass, she 
begins telling how to cook a hare, with the words : 
"First catch your hare.'' The trout culturist in quest 
of eggs may follow the sage advice of Mrs. Glass. But, 
when the trout is caught, he must pause. Eggs are 
desirable, but are worthless unless they are fully ripe ; 
and, if the eggs are not ripe, the mother will surely be 
killed if they are forced from her. A male fish may 
sometimes be ripped open and his milt teased out in" 
water, but no such Caesarian operation will yield young 
from the female trout, and in all trout work, extending 
over half a century, not a troutlet can say, with Mac- 
beth, 'T was from my mother's womb untimely ripped." 

The trout are either netted in ponds or streams or 
entrapped in spawning races, which are covered grav- 
elly runs, and will be described under the head of 
"Ponds." As our brook, brown, rainbow and most 
other trout spawn in the daytime, the early morning is 



Trout Breedins:. 6i 



'<>> 



best to take the eggs of such fishes as are ready to 
spawn on that day, leaving all others for a future day. 
The lake trout, improperly called "salmon trout," 5". 
nainayciish, spawn at night, and as they often live in 
the same lakes, and sometimes have their spawning 
grounds in common with the brook trout, their differ- 
ent hours of spawning prevent hybridizing, for milt is 
sterile after being in water a few minutes. 

In taking eggs from a covered raceway we dropped 
a screen at the lower end, threw off the covers and 
netted the fish into tubs of water for examination and 
assorting. The males are put together, the females 
that appear to be ripe go in other tubs, while those not 
nearly ripe are returned to the pond. The ripe female 
has a soft abdomen and the vent is swollen, protruding 
and red. Here is the delicate point : to judge the 
amount of pressure needed to start the eggs. Her tail 
is taken in the left hand and bent upward, the right 
hand holding the head with a grip of thumb and the 
three last fingers on the bony arch back of the gills ; 
the forefinger is then free to stroke the abdomen. Often 
the bending of the back will start the flow of eggs ; if 
not, then it may require several light strokes to start 
them : but if the trout is not fully ripe she must be kept 
a day or two more, for if much force is used she is apt 
to die, and while some of her eggs may be ripe enough 
to be impregnated, they will produce embryos, which 
will either die in the Qgg or live along in a feeble man- 
ner and amount to nothing, few surviving the absorp- 
tion of the sac. 

The male trout in spawning time has a bright red 
belly and is slim in comparison. He need not be han- 
dled as carefully as his mate with her burden. The 
milt of one male is often sufficient for half a dozen 



62 Modern Fishciiltiire in Fresh and Salt Water. 

spavvners, as a few drops are enough for the eggs of 
one fish. 

Impregnating the Eggs. — Clean pans must be 
used and cleanhness is essential in all fishcultural opera- 
tions. Have pans for this purpose and never put any- 
thing but water and eggs in them. Tin, earthen and 




Stripping a Small Trout. 

enameled-iron will do, but the paper ones which I tried 
once in shad hatching did not produce strong fish ; 
why, I don't know ; but they were discarded. Wet the 
pan to free it from dust and lightly drain it ; wet your 
hands and strip the female trout, remembering that she 
has an ovary on each side that reaches from vent to 
gills. Begin near the vent and work up gradually, and 
when you have finished she will look very slim. Work 



Trout Breeding. 



63 



as fast as possible, for she is becoming faint and may 
need a rest in the tub if you are too long about it. If 
you have a helper, let him strip a male or two at the 
same time, right over the eggs ; if alone, strip a male 
and then add just water enough to cover the eggs and 
let them stand for a few minutes and add as much more 
water. 

The milt of the male contains microscopic organ- 
isms called spermatozoa, w^hich lie quiescent until they 




Spawning Funnel, to strip fish in, to prevent their slipping 
among the eggs in pan below. 



strike water, when they begin to be active, but die in 
three to five minutes afterward. The eggs are soft 
and flabby when they come from the female, because 
there is a loose outer coat which has a funnel-shaped 
orifice in it, which is called the micropyle. Through 
this the tgg absorbs water, and if that water is heavily 
charged with milt a spermatozoon is likely to enter and 
the Qgg is fertilized. In twenty or thirty minutes the 
tgg will have absorbed all it can, and if not impreg- 



64 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

nated within that time no power can fertilize it. Al- 
ways dilute the milt slightly with water or it will not 
be active. Bloody milt is not good. Here is where we 
beat nature by bringing every tgg in contact with the 
milt and giving it a chance to get a spermatozoon be- 
fore it has ceased absorbing. 

At first the eggs adhere to the pan or to each other, 
because they are flabby, just as a piece of wet leather 
adheres to and can be made to lift a brick. They must 
not be disturbed until they have drunk their fill and 
are free, when they are washed from superfluous milt 
and placed on the trays. Leave them long in the pan 
and don't hurry their freeing ; the colder the water the 
longer they adhere. 

The Russian Method. — The above is the so-called 
"Russian Method," which made a great stir among 
fishculturists in America. We used to follow nature so 
closely that we took the eggs in a pan nearly full of 
water. In the New York Citizen of May 27, 1871, Mr. 
George Shephard Page had the experiments of M. 
Vrasski, a Russian scientist, translated, and it proved 
that impregnation was more perfect if the eggs and 
milt were put together before water was added, and 
when we tried it our per cent, of impregnation was 
more than doubled, and the "dry method" at once be- 
came popular ; yet sixteen years had intervened be- 
tween the discovery of Vrasski and the translation. 
All American fishculturists had been wondering why a 
trout carried so many unfertile eggs, but had not stum- 
bled on the secret. Of course one man claimed to have 
known it for years, but as it was his habit to claim 
every discovery, no one paid any attention to him, and 
if he really did know it and did not publish it he could 
not claim credit ; yet that fact never hindered him. In 



Trout Breeding, 65 

the reports of the American Fishcultttrists' Associa- 
tion, now the American Fisheries Society, it is on rec- 
ord that he bragged of showing Mr. Stone how to take 
trout eggs and filled the pan with water. I visited his 
ponds often and noted that he was picking out as many 
white eggs as any one. 

The main points in taking eggs are : cleanliness of 
all implements ; wet hands, to prevent removing slinie 
from fish, which means death to them from fungus, a 
point that will be taken up under the head of "Dis- 
eases ;" the rapidity with which the eggs and milt are 
brought together after extrusion, and the protection 
from changes of temperature. Temperature is a vital 
point. If the air and water are of nearly equal tem- 
perature, all right ; but if the air is much colder than 
the water, set the pans in water at once. If in the 
pond, cover the pans, for the sun must never strike a 
trout egg. I shall probably say this several times, and 
will now repeat it : never let the sun shine on a trout 
egg. If you have a hatching house, take the pans there, 
and if the air in the house is too cold set the pans in a 
hatching trough. 

Remember this : Water, whether in brooks or lakes, 
does not vary suddenly in temperature. It takes many 
days of warm or cold air to raise or lower a pond a 
degree or two ; the change is slow ; therefore the fishes, 
not being accustomed to sudden changes, cannot stand 
them. In winter the globe of goldfish stands in a room 
heated to 70° Fahrenheit. "The poor things need fresh 
water!" And they get it from the house service at 
near the freezing point, and after a few shocks of this 
kind that hardy and much-abused fish dies, and its 
owner wonders what killed it when "it had fresh water 
every day." A trout cannot endure anything like that 



(id Modern Fishculhtre in Fresh and Salt Water. 

treatment, and if the adult cannot stand it, how can the 
little hit of life which is trying to assert itself in the 
egg which is only half an hour old stand it? Look to 
the temperatures of air and water when taking trout 
eggs. 

The taking and impregnating of eggs is the most 
delicate and important part of fishculture. No man 
can become an expert by reading this or any other 
book. There are things that he must get by experience. 
I can tell him in words how to distinguish and strip a 
ripe trout, as far as words will go, but I realize that 
the directions are much like those books whose titles 
are, "The Violin Without a Master," and "The Art of 
Boxing," etc. After reading such works there is much 
to learn. 

I believe that a novice may follow my instructions 
and, after noting his failures from year to year, he will 
get on the right track ; but, if he can afford it, it will 
be years to his credit if he employs a competent fish- 
culturist, and they are now to be had from the hatch- 
eries of many States. I have taken eggs from the same 
trout many years without injury to her. A trout can 
retain its eggs if its stomach is empty, and they some- 
times sulk as a cow does when being milked, but a full 
belly causes her to be glad to be rid of her burden. 



SPAWN FROM WILD TROUT. 

Brook trout usually run up into swift, shallow, grav- 
elly streams to spawn, if th:re are such streams acces- 
sible to them. In Buck Pond, near Meacham Lake, 
Franklin County, New York, there is no inlet stream, 
and the trout spawn about the springs in the bottom. 



Trout Breeding. ^7 

I once helped the proprietor, Mr. A. R. Fuller, take 
eggs from fish which he netted there in about two feet 
of water. Yet I have known trout to spawn about 
sprinsr^holes in a lake when there was a good inlet 
strear?!. In such cases it is difficult to net the fish un- 
less the water is shallow and the springs near the shore, 
when a seine may be carefully put out around them 
and hauled ; but great care must be used, for they will 
rush for deep water at the slightest alarm. In all cases 
there must be a pen or pool provided for such fish as 
are not fully ripe. Out of ten spawners only one may 
be fit for stripping on the day it is caught. 

In parts of Canada, Vermont and the Adirondacks, 
the trout begin to go to the spawning grounds in Au- 
gust, and some will be ripe by the middle of September ; 
in that case the spawning season is over in November. 
On Long Island the spawning begins about November 
I, and continues into February in some years, the 
height of the season being in December. This is be- 
cause the waters do not get cool early in the season, 
and all fall and winter spawning fish develop their eggs 
on a falling temperature ; cold seems to stimulate the 
development of their eggs as warmth does that of the 
spring and summer spawners. 

It is best to have everything in readiness a month be- 
fore the spawning begins in order that those fish which 
run up at first may not be alarmed at weirs or traps 
placed in the water later. The males usually run up 
first, and often are a fortnight ahead of the females, 
and these males should not be caught or disturbed dur- 
ing their search for mates. IMr. J. W. Titcomb, Fish 
Commissioner of Vermont, recently read a paper be- 
fore the American Fisheries Society on collecting the 
spawn of wild trout, and I cannot do better than to 



68 Modern Fishcidture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

quote the following, concerning traps, from his 
paper : 

"Location. — The location of a trap should be made at 
a point where it is least likely to be inundated or washed 
out by freshets, w^hich would allow the escape of many 
fish when they are most likely to be running in greatest 
numbers. A point on the stream near its mouth is ad- 
vised, or at some place below any possible spawning 
bed, but not near enough to the outlet to be affected by 
back water from the pond. It is desirable to have a 
slight fall of water at the entrance to the trap. In 
order to avoid washouts, the selection of a point where 
the channel is broad is preferable. The slats of the 
weir occupying about four-fifths of the natural water- 
way will act as a barrier to raise the water above its 
natural level, more or less. 

"Coiistruction. — The trap is a V-shaped inclosure de- 
scribed by the mathematical term, 're-entering poly- 
gon,' made of slats varying in dimensions with the 
size of the stream and the force of the current. I used 
slats I inch square, planed on two sides, driven into the 
bed of the brook vertically, about ^ inch apart, and 
nailed to horizontal timbers or hewn logs. This frame- 
work of horizontal timbers consists of one course laid 
at water level and a parallel course at the extreme 
height of the weir. The general idea of such a trap is 
the same as the pound net, there being an opening of 
4 or 5 inches in the angle of the V. A gate can be ar- 
ranged in the entrance with a lever reaching to some 
point obscured from the view of the entrapped fish, 
which can be lowered whenever the trap is approached 
for inspection. This method of trapping trout is not 
new, but requires more precautions than for the cap- 
ture of other fish less active and gamy, and a few words 



Trout Breeding. 69 

of caution to the inexperienced may be desirable. Build 
your trap to resist the greatest freshet the stream is 
liable to develop. The run of trout at such times will 
be greatest. Be careful to get a foundation that will 
not be unaermined by the constant washing of the cur- 
rent between the slats. It is usually best to entirely 
surround the sides of a trap with slats rather than to 
depend upon the natural embankments. It is not 
necessary to use narrow slats for the sides of the trap, 
as no water passes through them, and the only object 
is to secure an inclosure from which fish can be easily 
dipped out. For a stream 6 feet wide I should build 
an inclosure about 6 feet square, the V extending into 
the inclosure about 3 feet. 

*Tn many localities it will be found possible to dig 
side ditches above the trap and inclosures, at right 
angles with the stream, in order to convey surplus 
water away from the trap, and lessen the danger of 
washout or inundation. The bottom of such ditches 
should be considerably above low water mark to carry 
ofif surplus high water. 

**A convenient place for the pens is just above the 
trap, so that the trout can be dipped from the latter 
into the former. They are constructed of the same 
material of which the trap is made, the upper side of 
the trap mclosure being used as the lower side or end 
of a series of pens. These should be made in shape 
and size to suit the location and number of fish ex- 
pected to be captured, and the same precautions should 
be taken with them as with the trap to guard against 
washouts. In many instances the bed of the brook is 
hard gravel and stones of large size, preventing the 
driving of the slats into it. In such cases it is desirable 
to make an apron at the base of the slat-work, upon 



70 Modern Pishculture in Presh and Salt Water. 

which the water will fall as it passes through them, and 
prevent washing out of holes underneath the slats. 
This apron can be made of boards as an artificial bot- 
tom to the trap or pens, but a cheaper and quite as ser- 
viceable method is to place evergreen boughs or green 
imderbrush at the base of the slat- work, covering the 
same with crushed stone or small stones from the bed 
of the brook, and then with coarse gravel. This fea- 
ture of construction is very important. If there is a 
hole in the trap or pens large enough for trout to 
escape, they v/ill surely do so. In fact, they will dig 
out under the slat-work if not properly guarded against. 
It is well to have planks extending over the trap and 
pens, on which one can conveniently stand to dip out the 
fish. Adjacent to the trap and pens, a rough board 
shanty can be constructed, or a tent can be temporarily 
used. There will be many stormy and cold days, how- 
ever, and I advise having a shanty with facilities for 
heating it, and with a bunk where the attendant can 
sleep. Add to this equipment a reflecting lantern. 
Field stations of this description are usually some dis- 
tance from habitation, and the ordinary comforts of 
camp life should be available to insure good work of the 
spawn taker." 

NUMBER OF EGGS IN TROUT. 

Mr. Titcomb gives a very interesting table of the 
yield of eggs from trout of different sizes, which is 
worth preserving. He says : 

"Twenty-nine female trout, stripped of spawn at this 
field station November 26, 1896, were measured and 
weighed and the number of eggs yielded by each re- 
corded. The girth, as given in the following table, 



Trout Breeding. 



n 



was taken before the trout were stripped and with a 
scale which might not be regarded as entirely accurate, 
but approximately so. Some of these trout had appar- 
ently dropped part of their eggs before being captured : 



Length 


Girth 


in inches. 


in inches. 


13 


7 


18 


7% 


10 


7% 


11^ 


61^ 


17 


11 


llVz 


11 


81^ 


4 


121/2 


7% 


121/3 


7 


111/2 


6% 


111/2 


6 


101^ 


5% 


12 


7 


161/2 


9 


11 


6 


13 


6% 


17 


10 


13 


6% 


11% 


6Vi 


12 


6 


If? 


9% 


10 


5% 


16 


10 


16% 


10% 


141/2 


8 


13% 


7% 


16 


8% 


17 


10% 


15 


9% 



Weight 


lbs. 


ozs. 


1 





2 


6 




61/2 




8 


2 


1 


1 


141/2 




3 




11 V2 




10 




8 




8 




6I/2 




91/2 


1 


101/2 




8 




111/2 


2 


1 




11%. 




111/2 




10 


1 


9 




61/4 


1 


14% 


1 


12 


1 


2% 




14 


1 


8 


2 




1 


8 



Total for 29 trout 31 6% 



No. of 

Eggs. 

1,394 

2,665 

492 

615 

2,563 

2,358 

130 

1,312 

820 

410 

615 

308 

820 

923 

615 

1,025 

2,665 

923 

820 

718 

1,845 

656 

1,948 

2,563 

1,845 

1,074 

1,845 

2,665 

1,948 

38,580" 



My estimate given below is not as large as this, but 
Mr. Titcomb gives figures from a record, while mine, 
written before I saw his, is merely an estimate such 
as would be given ofifhand in reply to a question. 

The flow of water in a hatching trough should be 
about 100 gallons per hour for each 10,000 eggs. 

If the work is distant from a hatchery there should 
be troughs or trays for developing the eggs as they 
are taken. These will be treated in another chapter. 
In gathering eggs in streams on Lojig Island my men 



72 Modern Fishculhire in Fresh and Salt Water. 

had less than a mile to go from the hatchery and 
brought the eggs back with them each morning. 

The following is my estimate of the yield of eggs of 
trout of different sizes : 



Age. Weight. Eggs. 

1% years. 3 to 5 oz. 50 to 160 

2% years. 14 oz. to Hi lbs. 700 to 1,000 

3% years. 2 to 3 lbs. 1,200 to 2,000 

Not known 31/2 to 5 lbs. 2,000 to 4,000 



These were pond-fed trout and the ages were re- 
corded from March i of each year. Thus : A trout of 
March i, 1890, would be i year and 8 months old in 
November, 1891 ; by some the fish would be classed as 
two-year-olds and by others yearlings. With me they 
were "yearlings" until actually two years old. I have 
had much larger trout at the ages given above, but 
have given a fair average weight. 



PACKING EGGS FOR SHIPMENT, 

No eggs should be packed for shipment until the 
eyes are plainly visible, and, in fact, the older the bet- 
ter, if possible. The embryo before the eye stage is 
reached is very delicate and easily killed by a jar of 
any kind ; even a shaking of the hatching trough may 
injure, if not kill it. But after the eyes can be seen 
the embryo begins to get strong and will bear rougher 
treatment. 

For transporting freshly taken eggs from the streams 
to the hatchery my men used tin water pails and 
brought them in water, if they came down the mill- 
ponds in a boat, but if they came from a stream down 



Trout Breeding. 73 

the harbor and \valked home they had a box i foot 
each way with a swinging door. In this there were 
hght frames ^ inch deep with bottoms of canton flannel, 
woolly side up ; on these the eggs were floated, under 
water, and evenly distributed in a single layer until 
each box was filled. An ordinary trunk or drawer 
handle on the top served to carry it by. On arriving 
at the hatchery the trays are put in the troughs, and by 
the movement of water by a feather the eggs are 
gathered to the lower side of the tray and then turned 
out. It does not hurt them to fall when in water, but 
to fall in air and strike the surface of water is fatal. 

To pack for a week's journey by rail the eggs 
ohould be well advanced and the embryo quite well 
colored — say, forty-five days old. If only a thousand 
ere to be sent, a box of tin or wood 8x4x3 inches deep 
will do, but not a cigar-box, because of the odor. Make 
holes in the bottom for drainage, lay an inch of living 
swamp-moss — sphagnum — on the bottom, then cover 
with mosquito netting, one layer of eggs covered with 
netting, a thin layer of moss, and so on, covering with 
moss. Press the cover down hard ; you can't hurt them 
by pressure of moss ; and they should be put up so 
firmly that if dropped endwise on the floor not an Qgg 
would stir. Then get a larger box and pack the smaller 
one in it with at least three inches of sawdust on top, 
sides and bottom, and mark : "Fish eggs ; keep cool, 
but don't let 'em freeze." 

The principle is this : The little fish within the egg 
needs oxygen as well as an adult. It would die in still 
water after the oxygen was absorbed, just as its parents 
would. The living moss gives oflF oxygen and holds 
the necessar}^ moisture, and that's all there is of it. The 
mosquito netting is a convenience to the one who un- 



74 Modern Fishcultnre in Fresh and Salt Water. 

packs them because he does not have to pick the eggs 
out of the moss. 

To pack eggs for foreign shipment is a different 
affair, although many fishculturists do not think so, 
and pack for a two-weeks' trip as described above and 
let them go. 

The late Prof. Spencer F. Baird, Fish Commis- 
sioner of the United States from 1871 until his death in 
1887, appointed me in charge of foreign exchanges of 
eggs and fish in 1877. In his day there were constant 
exchanges with Germany, and shipments of eggs of 
trout, quinnat salmon and our lake whitefish to Eng- 
land, France and Holland. I opened all foreign boxes, 
picked out the dead eggs, gave the living a "drink" and 
a wash, repacked what were good and sent them to the 
different Government or State hatcheries. I repacked 
all eggs that were to go abroad, and in 1877 and 1878 
went with the shipments to Germany. These things 
are mentioned to show my right to an opinion on the 
subject. 

In the years named I repacked the eggs of quinnat 
salmon on flannel trays, above which was a box for ice, 
which by its drip kept the eggs cool and moist, and the 
trays were so arranged as to be inspected and the dead 
removed, for in dead eggs lies great danger to the liv- 
ing. On the first trip only 25,000 were so packed, 
while the remainder went in the original packages, 
without opening, as per order from Prof. Baird by 
request of the original packer. My box turned out 
well ; the others were a total loss, and after that I was 
given carte blanche to repack as I saw fit. The next 
year I took 100,000 over safely and received the thanks 
of the Deutsche Fischerei Verein, a silver medal from 
the Societe d'Acclimation, Paris, and $200 from the 



Trout Breeding. 



7S 



King of Holland, sent through Mr. C. J. Bottemanne, 
Inspector of Fisheries, Bergen op Zoom. 

In after years I packed as follows : A layer of eggs 
on trays, a cover of mosquito netting and a thick layer 
of moss ; then a tray with perforated zinc bottom 




The First Refrigerating Box for Shipping Salmon Eggs 

TO Europe. 



filled with ice, cover screwed on and the box packed in 
another with sawdust. This packing did not need an 
attendant, and at the World's Fischerei Austellung, 
Berlin, 1880, it received a bronze medal. 



76 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

Mr. W. Oldham Chambers, secretary of the Na- 
tional Fishculture Association of England, in his his- 
tory of fishculture, "I.and and Water," March 2y, 1886, 
says : "We may well take a lesson from the American 
system of packing, which is very simple, but most effi- 
cacious in attaining the desired end, which is to dimin- 
ish as much as possible the rate of mortality through 
injury. In the first place, the ova are placed into trays, 
consisting of calico (canton flannel) stretched upon 
wooden frames, which are deposited one above the 
other in the centre of a large box, each tray being inter- 
laid with moss. Around the pyramid of trays, which 
are fixed firmly into position, a partition is reserved, 
serving as a receptacle for ice and sawdust — two most 
important factors in transmitting ova. On arrival at 
their destination the eggs can be readily unpacked by 
removing the trays from the box, clearing away the 
moss between each, and turning the ova en masse by 
means of water into the hatching troughs. The orig- 
inator of this capital method is, I believe, Mr. Fred 
Mather, of New York. I am able to testify to the fact 
that not more than thirty eggs out of every thousand 
sent me at various periods have perished during the 
journey from New York to London, which is an evi-- 
dence of the skill displayed in packing them." 

Very often 1 received foreign eggs packed in the 
old style, and after picking out the dead ones reported 
the remainder in good order, being required to make 
an immediate report. But I learned to deduct at least 
half because, with my first report in hand, I was ex- 
pected to turn out a proportionate lot of fry. 

Many "good" eggs either died a week later or pro- 
duced deformities which could never live. It is a fact 
that an mjury to an embryo is not always fatal (a no- 



Trout Breeding, yy 

table instance of this may be found in the first chapter 
of Tristram Shandy), and fish eggs may be injured in 
transit by heat, concussion, or a lack of moisture so 
that the embryo will come into the world only to die. 

Concussion is more immediately fatal than a high 
temperature ; it kills within a few days. Lack of mois- 
ture is shown at once by indented eggs, and upon the 
degree of indentation rests the damage. I have ex- 
perimented with such eggs and have found that those 
only slightly indented have produced good fish, while 
others somewhat drier did Tict. A high temperature 
on eggs of Sahnonidcc, and it is of these that I speak, 
makes weak embryos, if they live to break the shell. 
They hatch head first, and all fishculturists know that 
such fish have a small chance for life, or they have not 
strength enough to straighten from the coil in which 
they have been and are "whirligigs," spinning round 
m one direction at every effort to move. These die of 
starvation because they cannot swim. 

A lot of saibling eggs received from Germany looked 
first-rate, but one-fifth of the embryos had not strength 
enough to straighten after hatching. Another result 
of high temperature en route is a softening of the egg, 
either the outer covering or some part beneath, and 
these embroys hatch but do not live to take food. 

Of some eggs of our lake whitefish sent to me by 
Mr. Clark for transmission to Germany, and repacked 
in my boxes, the late Herr von Behr wrote as follows : 

"Berlin, Feb. i. 1881. 

"Mr. Mather: It is wonderful how good the 

whitefish eggs arrived. I divided them and sent them 

to many parts of Germany and Austria, with no loss 

to speak of. This manner of packing may be immor- 



/S Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

tal ! And if the promised trout eggs come in equally 
good shape I will be happy." 




CHAPTER IV. 



CARE OF TROUT EGGS. 



These things will kill your eggs in the troughs or 
in the nests, or redds, in the stream : The sun is deadly ; 
two minutes of direct sunshine through a crack will 
kill every egg it strikes. Sediment will close the pores 
in the ^gg and smother the embryo. A sudden jar on 
the trough, a heavy weight falling on the floor or con- 
cussion of any kind will either kill or deform the em- 
bryos, according to their stage of development. Rats 
and mice will eat the eggs, and one dead egg will kill 
all that it touches if left until fungus forms on it — say 



Trout Breeding. yg 

in three or four days. In the streams all these dangers 
are miitiplied ten-fold, and to them are added : ducks, 
geese, swans, eels, suckers, chubs, bullheads and year- 
ling trout, for the eggs of trout and salmon seem to 
have an attractive odor for fishes, and in England 
poachers use salmon eggs, probably not impregnated, 
but direct from the fish, as a lure for trout that is said 
to be irresistible, and salmon roe is even salted down 
for that purpose. 

Hatching the eggs of brook trout is a simple matter 
if proper arrangements are made at first. The condi- 
tions required are a steady flow of water at a low tem- 
peiature, the absence of sediment, and the exclusion of 
light, enemies, and all decaying animal or vegetable 
matter from the water, especially such as might arise 
from dead eggs — conditions which can usually be best 
obtained where a spring rises, but are often available 
below it if sufficient fall can be obtained. 

Let us suppose that the owner wishes to make an 
experiment to see what he can do in hatching trout, 
with which he has had no previous experience, and does 
not care to go to the expense of building a hatching 
house until he has proved his ability to manage one. 
He wishes to try 10,000 eggs with as little expense as 
possible beyond their cost. 

A tight trough of clean, well-seasoned pine, ten feet 
long, fourteen inches wide, and eight inches deep, with 
one end open, will do. Make according to directions 
for troughs. Place strips across it at eighteen inches 
apart, making nests an inch deep ; cover this with fine, 
well- washed gravel, about the size of buckwheat, or 
larger, to the depth of half an inch, put on a cover with 
hinges and lock, place a screen in the lower end to keep 
out mice and insects, and the trough is then ready. The 



8o Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

trough may be placed by making a dam with a board, 
a foot or more in height, and, tapping it with a half- 
inch pipe, let it run into the upper end of the trough, 
which should be slightly raised, so that there will be a 
small ripple over the strips, but not current enough to 
carry away the eggs when placed upon the gravel. 

If this trough is in a spring house, or a hatching 
house is built, where a settling reservoir can be used, it 
will be found a great help in keeping the eggs free from 
sediment which will collect and, partly covering the 
egg, interfere with its vitality by depriving it of its 
power of absorbing oxygen from the water in a man- 
ner analogous to breathing. The trough being in readi- 
ness and the eggs received, fill the trough by a dam at 
lower end and place the boxes in the trough before 
opening until they have acquired its temperature, then 
take a pan of water, remove the eggs and rinse them 
free from any dirt in the moss, pick out the few dead 
ones, which you will at once recognize by their milky 
whiteness, dip the edge of the pan under water and 
let the eggs drop on the gravel to be afterward dis- 
tributed with the wing feather of a fowl. Ever re- 
member these vital rules : never let the sun shine upon 
the eggs, never pour them through the air to strike the 
surface of the water (although they may fall any dis- 
tance under water) and never expose them to sudden 
changes of temperature. 

Having placed the eggs on the gravel, all that is now 
required is a daily inspection to see that the water is 
running steadily, and to remove such eggs as may die 
from time to time, to prevent them from decay and 
growing a woolly fungus which is very deadlv. They 
should also be feathered over as often as any sign of a 
deposit of sediment is observed, beginning at the head 



Trout Breeding. 8i 

of the trough and working it down. This requires to 
be attended to much oftener when some distance below 
the spring, as all disturbance above tends to foul the 
water and the flow in the trough is not strong enough 
to carrv it through. A box with the bottom knocked 
out, and a fine sieve substituted, is good to fasten above 
the pipe to keep leaves and coarse particles out. 

In the hatching house the use of gravel is nearly 
obsolete, although Mr. Frank N. Clark, a veteran fish- 
culturist of acknowledged ability, has recently returned 
to its partial use, as has been told in these pages. 
Frames, with wire bottoms, are used, as described 
under that head. The frames are often placed one 
above the other to the number of five or six, thereby in- 
creasing the hatching capacity of the trough as many 
times, and rendering the cleaning easily and thoroughly 
done bv raising the frames, sprinkling them with a 
common watering pot, and washing out the trough with 
a small broom ; with this system no strips are used, but 
for simple experiment the gravel will do, it being the 
old system under which we worked for years before the 
introduction of the frames. But while five or six lay- 
ers of eggs may be developed, these should not be al- 
lowed tol^atch'in the trough or the young would be 

smothered. 

A trout egg requires 60 to 100 or more days to hatch, 
according to temperature, and the colder it is, down to 
freezing, the longer it takes. Warm water, 60° Fahr. 
and upward, hatches them quickly, but leaves the em- 
bryos weak and liable to die. After hatching, the water 
in the trough may be deepened and the current slightly 
increased ; the strongest of the fry will work up stream 
and the weaker will try to hide or be carried against the 
screen, where they will finally be suffocated by the 



82 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

piessure of the water closing their gills against the 
wire. These had better be turned loose before dying. 



TOOLS OF THE CRAFT. 

The implements in use in the troughs are few and 
simple. Wisp-brooms to clean troughs and trays from 
alime. Strong feathers in wooden handles to move 
eggs that may be washed in heaps — the wing feathers of 
geese are best, because the quills are stiffer. Nippers 
for removing dead eggs or other substances are best 
made of red cedar; a piece 7 inches long by i^ inches 
wide and |- inch thick will do. Bore a |-inch hole an 
inch and a half from one end and rip from the other end 
into the hole with a saw and then trim down until you 
have a pair of nippers that are springy and w^ll open 
themselves. Either flatten and hollow the ends to hold 
an tgg, or better still, whip on loops of fine brass wire. 
Then make square frames of heavier brass wire and put 
in a wooden handle, the frames being 3 inches square. 
Cover them with "millinet," such as milliners use, sew 
it on perfectly flat and it is handy for picking up lots of 
eggs that have got off the trays or for other purposes. 
Strong glass tubes, about three-quarters of an inch 
outside diameter, and ten inches long, are very handy 
for picking up eggs or embryos for examination. Stop 
one end with the finger and put the other end near the 
object to be lifted. Remove the finger quickly and let 
the water rush in with the eggs, dirt or whatever you 
may wish. Close the top again and also the bottom 
and then you can examine the object at leisure. 

These things, with a microscope and thermometer, 
are all that I need to hatch several millions of trout. Go 



Trout Breeding. 



83 



over the eggs each day, remove all dirt, dead eggs or 
other matter ; keep everything clean, see that the flow 
of water is regular and wait for the hatching to begin. 



HATCHING IN BULK. 

vSome years ago I devised a series of trays to hatch in 
layers, which improved on the Clark-Williamson 
trough, which had fixed partitions in it where the water 
went under one and over the next. (See cut.) Fig. i 
is copied from plate XYI, Report U. S. F. C, 1872-73, 





and shows a "nest of trays in Williamson's Double 
Riffle Hatching Box." It will be noticed that the 
dams are permanent and in pairs, the upper one being 
the lowest to permit the water to flow over it and up 



9>4 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

under the next one, which extends above the water Hne, 
thus forcing- the water downward to flow up through 
the nest of trays and then down again. 

Fig. 2 is my system, so arranged as to secure the 
same result and yet have no dams in the troughs, which 
may be used to hatch single layers when the house is 
not crowded. The trays should be square and of exact 
size, only one-quarter inch smaller than the inside of 
the trough. I have urged that all troughs be of exact 
size inside, in order to avoid ill-fitting trays. Each 
tray should fit any trough. Rabbet the bottoms of the 
trays so that the wire-cloth is sunk in, for the trays must 
set tightly on each other. Use No. 14 wire-cloth, 
which is small and does not injure the embryos by let- 
ting sacs and tails through. 

The top tray. A, has no eggs on it, but has a stop- 
water, D, fast to the side, which must be put up stream. 
The lower tray, 4, has a half-inch square strip on three 
sides, which forces the water up through the eggs. The 
water line is at W. To each gang of trays, four or 
more, there must be the two special top and bottom 
ones. The sets of trays are kept from floating up, or 
from escape of water on the bottom, by braces across 
the trough or by weights. In cleaning the eggs the 
trays are floated up and one tray after another is gone 
over. They should be picked over twice a week until 
hatching begins, and then only once to remove shells 
and pick out dead. The fry can be kept in these frames 
until ready to take food, when they may be put in float- 
ing boxes in the ponds to be fed or may be turned out. 

The capacity of a set of four trays, as described, is 
2,500 salmon or 7,000 trout, thus increasing the hatch- 
ing capacity of a trough fourfold and holding the fry 
safely until the smothering period has passed. The 



Trout Breeding. 



8^ 



embryo fish lie quietly on these frames because there is 
but little light, a thing they avoid, but if the "rabbet" 
for the wire-cloth is deeper than one-sixteenth of an 
inch, letting the wire in deeper, there will always be 
some fry on top of the frame below to bother by escap- 
ing w^en cleaning. A trough full of these trays does 
not show up much "business" to a visitor, but it is of 
use when the hatchery is crowded. 

Un IMPREGNATED Eggs ncvcr change from the time 
thev are taken until they turn white, which they may 
do at any time, often not until hatching begins. With a 
microscope I can see the change in a trout tgg at three 
d?vs old and with the eve at ten to twenty days, accord- 







Smaller Tools of the Craft. 

ing to temperature. At first all the eggs have a ring at 
the top ; no matter if it is rolled over the ring will come 
up. The first sign of impregnation under the micro- 
scope is a division of the yolk into halves and then 
quarters ; then comes the "mulberry mass," and after- 
ward the line of the backbone and the eyes. But the 
tgg with no fish in it, if it has not turned white, holds 



S6 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

its ring, and when the eyes appear the "ringers," as we 
call them, can be picked out and fed to the yearlings ; 
and they are very fond of them. If eggs are packed 
for shipment all ringers should be picked out, as they 
"die" at the slightest disturbance, and only fertile eggs 
should be sent. 



CHAPTER V. 



CARE OF FRY. 



The Century Dictionary defines "fry" as "the very 
young of a fish." In that sense I use it. Technically 
the young fish is an embryo while in the egg and after 
bursting the shell until the umbilicus is absorbed. But 
I have declined to use the French word "alevin" for 
the hatched embryo, just as I decline to use the Latin 
"ova" for eggs. English fishculturists advertise "eyed 
ova." There's a mouthful ! What's the matter with a 
good English word like eggs? I would as soon think 
of asking a waiter to bring me "two fried ova" as of 
calling fish eggs by a Latin name to show my learning. 
Most of American fishculturists speak of "eggs of fish" 
and call embryo trout "fry" until the sac is absorbed, 
when they are "babies" until they are entitled to be 
termed "yearl;ngs." 

A troutlet which bursts the shell head first or lets any 
part of its umbilical sac out in advance is a poor, weak 
critter whose shell has worn thin and it had no power to 
burst it. Few such live. A strong, healthy embryo 
trout rips the shell open with its tail and wiggles about 



Trout Breeding. ^7 

with head and sac in the shell, driving it here and there 
as if it meant business imtil the shell drops away. 

In trottt culture the hatching is a simple matter and 
one that is easily learned, so that a child can attend to 
it • the real difficulty for a novice bemg m keeping he 
voung fish the first year and overcoming, first, the dis- 
position of half of them to die without apparent cause 
or provocation during the nrst three months, and, sec- 
ondlv, the propensity to escape through an unseen 
crack or a defective screen; but the second season all 
that are left seem to thrive well and to be contented 
with their confinement, provided a gate is not left open 
fo.- them to get into the stream, and even then they are 
liable to return at the spawning time. 

A newly hatched trout would never be classed as a 
voung trout bv one who sees it for the first time. They 
look like small threads of albumen, which have great 
eves, and attached to the belly is the great yolk-sac, 
about as large as the original egg. They cannot swim 
, but move about on the bottom in an apparently aimless 
manner, seeking to avoid light. In the brooks hey 
would scatter and bury themselves in the gravel, but in 
the troughs thev huddle and crowd in corners to avoid 
the light, for thev take no food until their haversack, 
with ihirtv to fortv days' rations, is exhausted ana their 
instinct is to hide. This is a critical time. They may 
pile on top of their fellows and smother the bottom ones. 
This must be prevented. Keep the upper parts of the 
trough darkened with covers or window shades and le 
the outlet screens be in the light. This will prevent 
them from squeezing in any crack about the screen and 
dying there, or of their letting tails or parts of sacs 
through the wire-cloth and perishing. . , ,. 

The crowding is worse while they are young and deli- 



88 Modern Pishciitture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

cate, say for the first fortnight, and I have put stones 
and bricks in the troughs to induce them to scatter. But 
these are not good ; some will wedge their heads under 
them and die. If kept dark by covers, as aforesaid, for 
a couple of weeks they will come out right, for the 
crowding is merely to escape light, and when the covers 
are lifted the little fellows which were cjuiescent begin 
to scatter to find a dark place. Under this management 
the strong fellows will be well up in the trough and 
the weaklings and deformities will be sifted out by the 
incessant working of their tails to keep their places and 
will be found about the foot of the trough ; crooked 




W/J 



To Prevent Fry from Crowding. — This is a small inner frame 
to place in the trough. BB, outer and inner troughs ; F, 
an inner projection of wood or tin; W, wire cloth through 
which water from the outside flows. By W. P. Seal in 
Forest and Stream, Feb. 19, 1891. The fry are supposed to 
gather below the wire cloth W. 

tails, double-headers and all others not fitted to survive 
will be found near the outlet. 

The newly hatched trout is much more delicate than 
the Qgg and must be treated accordingly. Move them, 
when necessary, by pouring water on them or by mak- 
ing currents with a feather, but don't touch them. If 
you wish to disturb them to remove the dead or to send 
them toward the head of the trough take a piece of half- 
inch pine board, a little less than the width of the trough 
and one inch less than its depth ; tack a strip on its 
upper edge to rest on the top of the trough and slide this 
down the trough with some force. The water will rush 



Trout Breeding. §9 

up stream and carry the fry with it, and a few such 
movements will send them swirling toward the head of 
the trough. Delicate as they are to the rough touch of a 
feather, the swirl of water does not hurt them ; it merely 
carries them with it and they come in contact with noth- 
ing but water. 

A trout or salmon, newly hatched, is a beautiful thing 
under the microscope. The circulation of blood is 
shown more clearly than in the frog's foot, which is the 
standard thing to use in school work ; but the frog is 
available at all times. Under the microscope the caudal 
heart can be seen up to the fifth day, when it is ab- 
sorbed. The streams of blood in the sac seem to flow 
like creeks, now dammed by a lot of corpuscles and 
then breaking away and flowing on, while the plexus in 
the tail shows the capiUaries returning the arterial 
blood to the veins and back to the gills for oxygenation. 
The loss in eggs is largely due to the lack of impreg- 
nation, although some few embryos die after the eye- 
spots show. The loss after hatching and before feed- 
ine- is lar^e-lv from malformations and weaklings if 
there has been no smothering, a thing which the expeit 
fishculturist does not allow to happen, because his 
trained eye detects the first sign of crowding and stops 
it. But as all this is not written for the expert, but for 
the beginner, all these dangers are mentioned. If the 
beginner buys 20,000 eggs from a reliable dealer he is 
sure that each egg has a fish in it when the lot is put up. 
If he expects that he will hatch and rear 20,000 trout he 
will be mistaken. Why should he expect it ? He can't 
raise 900 chickens out of a thousand that are hatched, 
not to mention those which died in the egg. He can't 
average nine out of ten colts, calves or children if he is 
doing business on a large scale, and why should he ex- 



90 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

pect fish to be an exception ? Given 20,000 good trout 
eggs, with the eyes to be seen in "each ^gg, they are 
about fifty days old and are due to hatch in ten or 
twenty days more. He will pick out 500 white eggs 
before they begin to hatch and 500 more in dead and 
deformed embryos that never could live. That is only 
5 per cent, loss before feeding, and is very low. It is 
more likely to be twice that number, yet there is no fault 
to be found with the seller nor with the receiver. It is 
the natural mortality which is common to all young 
animals. It is part of nature's scheme in animal in- 
crease, and no man can improve it. 

We not only impregnate more eggs than is possible in 




Embryo Salmon, showing yoke sac with oil globules and 
veins, also the embryonic fin with indications of perma- 
nent fins. 

a state of nature, but we protect both v.'ggs and embryos 
until the little fellows are ready to take food, a period of 
some seventy days in the ^gg and of at least thirty more 
before the sac is absorbed. This nearly covers the win- 
ter months and brings our proteges up to the time when 
insect life, either in perfect form or larvae.' is stirring in 
the spring and afifording food for the baby trout which, 
having absorbed its yolk-sac, is swimming clear of the 
bottom, heading up-stream and examining every tiny 
bit that floats down. It takes a morsel in its mouth, 



Trout Breeding. 91 

throws it out and settles down on the bottom to rest, its 
curiosity having been satisfied. 

Take up one now in a glass tube and note that the 
embryonic fin which ran from the insertion of the (;iorsal 
fin around the tail to the anal fin, like the fin of an eel, 
has been absorbed and the permanent fins are developed. 
The sac w^hich seemed to be absorbed appears like a bit 
of amber in the cleft abdomen, as though the fish were 
about to split open. The sac is almost absorbed and the 
walls of the abdomen will join together over it and the 
embryo will be a trout in a few days. Yet it will take 
food by the mouth before the sac is fully absorbed, and 
a proof of this is not in its seizing floating particles, but 
in its passing of ordure. Nothing passes the embryo 
trout while subsisting on its sac ; the yolk is pure nutri- 
ment, with no waste, but when it begins to feed with its 
mouth there is a waste which is common to all animals 
after leaving the embryo stage, and the troughs must be 
feathered down every day. 

The fish with curled tails cannot be helped. They 
cannot swim and must spin around in one direction, and, 
being unable to seek food, must die. The "double 
headers" occur in many shapes, from two and even 
three heads to fish merely joined at the tail, and even 
"twins," which were two apparently perfect and dis- 
tinct fish, but with only one umbilical sac between them. 
1 have tried to rear thousands of these monstrosities and 
have had them take food with both heads for several 
days and then find them dead some morning. The 
salmon and trout seem to be more given to producing 
monstrosities than any other fishes on my visiting list. 

A little salt is good to sprinkle at the head of the 
trough occasionally if there is a sign of fungus from fin 
or tail nibbling. 



92 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 



CHAPTER VI. 



FEEDING FRY. 



The time of absorbing the sac we roughly state at 
about thirty days, but it varies according to tempera- 
ture. Those hatching about February ist, in cold 
water, are longer in absorbing it than those coming out 
a month later, especially if warm rains come on. From 
twenty-five to forty days would be more accurate. 

When nearly ready to take food they head up-stream, 
and the strongest will be at the inflow. They will 
crowd in a corner if there is an eddy there, and some 
may try to jump up the incoming stream and land on 
the floor. To remedy this make a little box, about 6x9 
inches and 5 deep, with a bottom of fine wire-cloth or 
perforated tin, and hang it so that the water pours into 
it, the bottom being a couple of inches below the sur- 
face. Such a box is good to put in when hatching 
begins, as it catches all insects and crustaceans which 
might injure the fry. Now it will distribute the inflow 
through small holes and prevent jumping out. 

When they begin to rise and examine small floating 
objects care must be taken that the trough is not over- 
crowded, for if they are crowded they will soon nibble 
fins and tails, even though food is plenty. They seem 
to do this from irritability at being crowded and nip at 
a tail as if to say: "Get out of my way." When a tail 
or pectoral fin has been nibbled it turns white, is mis- 
taken for food and is picked at -until fungus sets in and 
the troutlet dies. In a trough 10 feet by 14 inches, with 



Trout Breeding. 93 

water 6 inches deep, 7,000 trout fry are quite enough to 
feed. If the trough is 14 feet long 10,000 may be re- 
tained. The remainder, if any, should be placed in 
other troughs or in floating boxes in the ponds. For 
description of these boxes see the chapter on shad. 

To feed the fish which we should have from 10,000 
eggs take a piece of beef liver as large as a hickory nut 
and scrape it with a sharp knife until only fibre is left : 
take the scrapings and pass all of it that will go through 
a screen of about twenty wires to the inch by rubbing 
and pressing it with a flat piece of shingle and scraping 
it off the under side. Place this on a board and add a 
few drops of water to make a thin paste, and then drop 
in a little at a time, taking care not to feed more than 
they will eat, in order not to foul the trough. It may 
be flicked from a knife blade down the trough. My fa- 
vorite is a "knife" made of hard wood, something like a 
paper cutter. Watch them and see if they take it. Feed 
carefully all down the trough. The motion of their 
tails will now send most of the waste to the foot of the 
trough, yet it should be feathered as before. 

In a few days their appetites will increase greatly, 
and it is better to feed little and often than to try to give 
a big feed twice a day. I would not recommend any 
person to undertake to raise young trout by artificial 
feeding in troughs or boxes for the first three months 
unless they can feed them every hour. The appetite of 
the juvenile trout is as frequently intermittent as that of 
other young animals, and requires one to stand over 
them almost constantly. 

When I began trout culture ( 1868) the only book on 
the subject was "American Fishculture," by Norris, 
published in that year and now out of print. It con- 
tained all that was then known, which was but little. 



94 Modern Fishciilture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

Norris speaks of different kinds of food for fry, such 
as "Liver or lean meat, boiled hard and grated ; the 
yolks of eggs, boiled hard and reduced almost to a pow- 
der ; raw liver, chopped fine with a long sharp knife ; 
fresh or coagulated blood ; fresh shad or herring roe, 
raw or boiled ; thick milk or bonny clabber and curds." 

I had an experience in trying most of these things. 
Mr. Stephen H. Ainsworth, the first man to breed trout 
in the State of New York, cautioned me not to over- 
feed the fry. I had taken some 50,000 eggs from wild 
trout in my first year's work and had bought 20,000 
more, and my few troughs were full. My loss in un- 
impregnated eggs was great, for I had no instructor. I 
had about 35,000 fr}^ I must try different foods and 
observe their effect, being careful not to feed too much. 

The boiled egg was a failure. It dissolved and 
spread over the gravel and grew fungus ; the fry were 
all head and no body, looking snaky. The curd acted" 
the same way ; clotted blood was worse. All these 
troughs must be cleaned if the fish were to be saved, and 
a vile mess that gravel was. The grated boiled beef 
was not so foul, but the fish were evidently starving. 
Although a novice, I could see that. Those fed on 
fresh liver were doing well comparatively, but were 
slim and "all head." I changed to liver in all the 
troughs and some fish began to pick up, but thousands 
died. I caught a few "wild" ones that had either 
escaped from my troughs or been naturally spawned, 
and their deep bodies, broad backs and relatively small 
heads showed that my fish were not well fed and were 
just kept alive. "Why," I asked miyself, "should a 
young trout be restricted in its food ? Surely it gets all 
it wants when wild." Then I fed them all they would 
eat every half hour, and could see them pick up, but 



Trout Breeding. 95 

they never made thrifty fish. I saved some ii,ooo to 
live through May, but I knew more about feeding trout 
than when I began. 

Along the Massachusetts coast the trout breeders 
feed the eggs of haddock to the fry and get good results. 
Shad eggs, named by Norris, come too late to be of use. 
I've mixed cream with liver to keep it floating longer, 
but don't care for it. Bellies of soft clams, Mya are- 
fiaria, the "maninose," have been used by me with good 
results, but beef liver is the best food for trout and 
salmon fry in the troughs that I know of. Make it 
fine at first, coarser as they grow, and crowd it to them. 

During late years I have used the sausage chopper 
of the Enterprise Manufacturing Company, of Phila- 
delphia, with good results in labor saving ; but two ne v\^ 
plates were made with holes one-eighth and one-six- 
teenth of an inch, as the smallest holes in the plates that 
come with the chopper are one-quarter of an inch. The 
plate with smallest holes was used until the babies could 
take larger particles. Yet after passing this chopper 
the food must be sifted, as described, because no fibre 
must be fed, as it passes undigested and is seen as a 
long white string hanging from the fish, and is trouble- 
some to pass. It may cause inflammation and death. 
The Enterprise chopper is a great improvement on the 
one in use years ago and figured by Mr. Stone as ''Star- 
ret's American chopping machine,'' which had a verti- 
cal knife worked by a "walking-beam" in a revolvmg 
cylinder, because the meat must pass through holes of 
a certain size. It is the best chopper on the market. 

Milk and cream have been used as food for the fry, 
but they are not complete and wholesome, and under my 
feeding produced great mortality. Shreds of beef, 
brains and the spleen, or ''milt," as butchers call it, ar^ 



96 Modern Fishcultiire in Fresh and Salt Water. 

all good foods if cut or scraped and passed through the 
sieve, which should be changed to a larger mesh as the 
fish grow ; the soft part of clams and eggs of other fish 
make excellent food for the very young trout, but the 
eggs of hens will make filthy troughs on account of so 
much of the yolk becoming dissolved and settling to the 
bottom, and there decaying. 

On Long Island I found the bellies of soft clams quite 
good, but returned to beef liver. As the suckers spawn 
in early spring, their eggs should be good food for 
baby trout, as I know that the flesh of suckers is for 
adults. 

The food of the very young wild trout consists of the 
newly hatched larvae of water-breeding insects and the 
young of the smaller fresh water Crustacea, food that 
we have no way of supplying in quantity, and my own 
experiments, with half a dozen barrels of rainwater, to 
breed "wigglers" (the larvae of mosquitoes) were suc- 
cessful as far as producing good food for the fry went ; 
but as it took them about five or six days to grow, only 
one barrel could be strained each day, and the produc- 
tion was only equal to the demands of a few hundred 
fry, so that to carry it out on a scale sufficient to feed 
50,000 would have made an imposing array of barrels 
and involved great labor and expense. The beauty of 
this kind of food is that it keeps until used, as well as 
being most suitable and wholesome. 

Mr. Charles Hoxsie devised an automatic feeder for 
trout fry, intended to dispense with hand labor. An 
underflow wheel of 10 or 12 inches diameter was put 
in the distributing trough and a crank of i inch moved 
a I strip which was suspended by cords over the heads 
of the troughs and gave it a 2-inch reciprocal move- 
ment parallel to the distributing trough — a wire would 



Trout Breeding. 97 

do as well and would not buckle as my rod did if there 
was any obstruction. A tumbler rested on a strip at the 
head of each trough, and in the bottom of it was bored 
a ^-inch hole ; in this hole worked in and out a bit of 
wood, about half the diameter of the hole, attached to 
the rod by an arm. The tumblers were filled with food 
wet to the proper consistency ; the wheel revolved ; the 
long rod worked back and forth, forcing the wooden 
pins in and out of the tumblers and dropping the food 
automatically. I put one in the hatchery at Cold Spring 
Harbor, N. Y., but found that it required constant at- 
tention to see that the tumblers were not clogged and 
that their contents Vvcre fluid enough but not too fluid. 
In theory the thing was perfect. In practice the water 
settled to the bottom and went out first, and when it 
was gone the liver would not flow ; it remained in a 
solid mass and formed an arch above the wooden pin, 
which tried to do its duty but could not. 

Such experiments are of value, even if the results 
are failures, for they show us what to avoid. Mr. Hox- 
sie looked after his own trout and had comparatively 
few. I had more, and, working for the State, it was 
desirable to produce the best results without too great 
regard for expense, and so I went back to hand-feeding 
with brains behind it. I had a man, Foster Van Aus- 
dall, who was the most persistent trout-feeder I ever 
knew, and — I am glad to say so out loud — he loved to 
see trout feed, either old or young, and he was on his 
feet all day feeding. When he came to the lower end 
of the last trough he would begin at the head of the 
first again, and so he went the rounds day by day while 
the other men were on the road with trout for stocking 
public waters. He loved his work, and the trout 
showed it. 



98 Modern Pishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 



HOW OTHERS FEED FRY. 

The late Sir James Maitland, Bart., had a large breed- 
ing establishment at Howietoun, near Sterling, Scot- 
land, and made it a commercial success. In a pampii- 
let "On Stocking Rivers, Streams, Lakes and Reser- 
voirs with Salmonidae," published by his secretary, Mr. 
J. R. Guy, Sterling, N. B., 1892, Mr. Maitland tells 
how to feed fry. While I do not agree with his views, 
they are quoted because he had an extensive experi- 
ence, and therefore would consider that his ideas are 
as good as mine, if not better. He says : 

''The best and most economical food for trout fry 
costs about IS. 4d. per pound (nearly 32 cents) — that 
is to say, one pound of this paste goes further, and pro- 
duces much better results, than sixteen pounds of liver, 
because it is more nourishing and there is no waste. 
The food is prepared by weighing several pounds of 
fillet of beef — not beefsteak, which is too stringy, nor 
a piece off the sirloin, which is generally too fat. Fillet 
of horse is equally suitable with fillet of beef, and sir- 
loin of horse, being generally very lean, is nearly as 
good. . . . Mutton is not suitable. All the fat 
being carefully scraped off, and the meat weighed, it is 
pounded in a large marble mortar and passed through 
a coarse sieve. The yolks of hard-boiled eggs are then 
added, nine eggs being allowed to each pound of meat. 
The eggs should be several days old, as, if new-laid, it 
is impossible to boil the yolk until it is mealy. . . . 
When the yolks of eggs and meat have been thoroughly 
mixed in the mortar they are passed through a fine wire 
sieve and kneaded into a stiff paste. This is rolled into 
the shape of a thick sausage and cut and rolled into 






Trout Breeding. 99 

large pills, each sufficient to give one meal to five boxes. 
. . . When the food is all prepared it is taken to 
the hatching-house and one pill placed on the edge of 
the fifth box in each row. One of the girls then goes 
round with a feeding spoon, and, beginning at the bot- 
tom box, pres&es the food through the perforated zinc 
of the feeding spoon, which reduces it into fine vermi- 
celli. When the threads are about two inches long 
they are shaken off into the water. . . ." 

In 1 89 1 I sent circulars to several trout breeders 
asking a few questions. They were: "3. On what do 
you feed the fry for the first three months, and how?" 
"4. What do you consider to be a fair percentage of fry 
brought through the first six months, reckoning from 
the time of their first taking food?" "5. Do you feed 
fry in hatching troughs? If so, how long?" Here are 
some answers : 

Charles G. Atkins, Superintendent of Salmon Hatch- 
ing Station, U. S. F. C, East Orland, Me. — "3. In 
troughs on chopped liver for one month or six weeks, 
then part on same food and part on maggots ; majority 
on maggots this year. From July 15 to 30, 1891, have 
fed about 200,000 on maggots. 4. Sixty per cent. ; 
but we have done much better. In 1889, out of 109,- 
965 Atlantic salmon eggs, counted in winter and early 
spring, we saved until the next October 91,856, or 83 
per cent., actual count at start and finish; that is my 
very best. 5. All summer and fall, sometimes through 
the winter." 

E. M. Robinson, Superintendent U. S. F. C, Mam- 
moth Springs, Ark. — "3. Beef liver, but don't approve 
it. 4. Seventy-five per cent. 5. No ; we use ditches 
5 feet wide, 15 to 20 feet long, and shaded half way 
the length." 



loo Modern Fishcultiire in Fresh and Salt Water. 

E. F. Boehm, Superintendent N. Y. F. C, Sacandaga 
Station. — "3. Do not feed fry here; can't get food. 4. 
Seventy-five per cent." 

C. S. White, Romney, W. Va., Fish Commissioner. — 
"3. Milk in forms of clabber and curd, eggs, liver, 
lights, corn-bread and fish roe, fed upon sods, which 
are removed every three or four days. 4. Fifty per 
cent., averaging year by year. 5. About three weeks." 

[I am not sure but Mr. White mistook the questions 
to mean adult trout. — F. M.] 

Dr. R. O. Sweeny, Superintendent U. S. F. C, Du- 
luth, Minn. — "3. Finely grated fresh, sweet livers, 
mixed with thick, sour curd of milk, of the consist- 
ency of paste, of such gravity and consistence as will 
drop from a spoon and sink to bottom of trough in a 
lump. 4. I think I can honestly say that the shrinkage 
is not over 10 per cent. 5. Have held them till August 
in the troughs, but they must not be crowded or there 
will be cannibalism." 

George T. Mills, Commissioner for Nevada. — "3. 
Liver, boiled ; when cool, grated in the trough ; sour 
milk occasionally. 4. In State hatchery, 90 per cent. ; 
we do not keep fry longer than three months." 

Albert Rackow, Elmont, N. Y., private ponds. — "3. 
Beef hearts and minnows. 4. I lost seven out of 10,- 
000. 5. I feed in troughs 6x12 feet and 8x24 feet." 
[See question No. 3.] 

W. F. Page, Superintendent U. S. F. C, Neosho, 
Mo. — "3. Raw beef liver until ij inches long, which 
they get to be here in five weeks after taking food ; 
then gradually mix mush of ship-stufi: with liver. 4. 
Eighty per cent. 5. Yes, about five weeks." 

J. W. Hoxsie & Co., private ponds, Carolina, R. I. — 



Trout Breeding. 101 

^'3. Pulp of sheep livers. 4- Eighty per cent. 5. Feed 
in troughs to six or eight weeks." 

W. L. Gilbert, Old Colony Trout Ponds, Plymouth, 
Mass.— "3. Sheep livers. 4. Forty per cent. 5. Don't 
feed in hatching troughs!" 

Just before going to press these questions and an- 
swers were returned to the writers for correction after 
eight more years' experience, but none of them made 
any. A letter from Mr. G. Hansen, Osceola, Wis., 
March 26, 1899, says : 'T feed fry up to one year old 
on beef liver and milk curd, mixed in the proportion of 
two parts liver to one of curd. I feed in troughs from 
February to May, sometimes until September, with 
good success, but prefer putting them in a nursery pond 
in May. The green slime, algae, bothers me some in 
the hatching house by clogging screens, therefore I re- 
move the fry. The wild fish give the best eggs." 



COMMENTS ON THE METHODS OF FEEDING. 

As a summing up of this question of feeding fry, 
let me say : There is nothing better than liver of beef, 
or perhaps other animals, from the start. Maggots are 
as good after the fish get big enough to swallow a full- 
grown one, and they do not drop until they are full 
grown. Trout in nature do not eat vegetable food, and 
while curd may be of value, I don't take a cent's worth 
of stock in any admixture of vegetable matter. Under 
my management of the New York hatchery on Long 
Island, tlie yearling trout, at twelve months old, meas- 
ured from six to nine inches. No hatchery in the State 
could show such trout. This was partly owing to 
crowding the food to them and partly to the tempera- 



102 Modern Fishcidturc in Fresh and Salt IVatcr. 

ture of the water. Such results might be obtained in 
places as far, or farther, south, but never in the colder 
waters of the mainland of New York. 

You cannot overfeed a young trout, nor offer it suit- 
able food too often, and upon its growth during its first 
few weeks of feeding depends its future development. 
Once a dwarf always a dwarf ; and the fry need to be 
kept growing from the start, like pigs, or they will 
never catch up to their better fed fellows. 

Many fishculturists say, as Mr. Hansen does : "The 
wild fish give the best eggs." Then there is a fault in 
over or under feeding at the breeding season. Fish 
properly fed in ponds should, like other domestic ani- 
mals, improve in fecundity and early maturity. 



INTRODUCING NEW BLOOD. 

This is a good thing in the breeding of cattle or 
fowls, but is not necessary with trout. With fowls 
and the cattle on the farm there is danger of in-breed- 
ing because the parents are so fev/, especially the sires. 
There was no such danger among the herds of buffalo 
and there is none among the trout in confinement. Take 
the eggs from 2,000 fish and fertilize them with the 
milt of 1 ,000 males ; turn the progeny loose and breed 
from them two years later, and what are the chances of 
mating brother and sister? Even if this should hap- 
pen, as it may, the same thing is purposely done by 
breeders of horses and cattle who are trying to pro- 
duce the best stock. 

It was mv policy to keep the thriftiest fish for breed- 
ers, and in the twelve years that I ran the Long Island 
hatchery the yearling trout increased from a maximum 



Trout Breeding. 103 

length of six to nine inches. That shows what breed- 
ing from the best will do in a short time. If you have 
two or three thousand spawners you need not fear de- 
generation from in-breeding. You have few chances 
of in-breeding. Suppose that six thousand persons, 
equally divided as to sex, settle on a fertile island. 
There is no chance for extensive in-breeding. Keep 
your own stock ; breed from the best quick-growing 
stock, and keep out all outside wild blood as you would 
keep out blood from the wild boar among your im- 
proved pigs, and go on and develop a breed of trout 
that will be as far above their wild fellows as a sette? 
is above a wolf. 

If, however, you think you need new blood, don't 
get it from wild trout, but from some other trout 
breeder ; exchange males with him as you would swap 
'"roosters" with a neighbor. 

The breed of trout can never be improved by revert- 
ing to wild stock. That fallacy has retarded trout cul- 
ture many years. If your pond trout do not breed 
freely it is evident that you are not giving them the 
best treatment, either in food, flow of water, or some- 
thing else that they lack. 



GROWTH OF FRY. 

Our trout on Long Island were a wonder to the men 
from other hatcheries — five to six inches in October and 
seven to nine inches at less than a year old — but the 
warmer waters of Long Island had something to do 
with this growth. No amount of food would produce 
such fish in the cold waters of the Adirondacks. A 
man who had a great reputation as a fishculturist about 



104 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

the time I began told me that "water is never too cold 
for a trout, nor too warm for a sucker." He was wrong 
about trout, for they will develop faster in a tempera- 
ture of 65° Fahr. than in one ten degrees lower; their 
life is more active and their digestions are consequently 
quicker, hence their growth is greater. 

In its most southern habitat our brook trout excels 
its more northern kinsman, if food is equally plenty in 
both cases and if there is some depth to the water, for 
trout in mountain streams never grow large. 



AUTOMATIC FEEDERS. 

An automatic feeder would be a desirable thing, but 
a perfect one has not yet been found. When in charge 
of the American fishcultural display at the World's 
Fisheries Exhibition in Berlin, in 1880, I saw a Ger- 
man device to lift a gate and let out food at intervals, 
regulated by a water-wheel, but it dropped it all at the 
head of the trough, where the strongest fish got the 
first whack at it and grew stronger and more able to 
sustain their advantage. Then there was an arm on a 
universal joint which dipped a spoon into the food, 
carried it over the trough and spilled it. 

All these things are useless ; it is the small fellows 
down at the lower end which need to be fed as well as 
the others ; neglect of them means death or a stunted 
lot of yearlings. The fish in a trough must have an 
equal chance to get food, and any feeder which only 
feeds at the head of the trough is good for nothing. 
There is nothing like an intelligent man to do this 
work and to see fair play in all parts of a pond or 
trough. 



Trout Breeding. 105 



PUTTING OUT THE BABIES. 

In May the little fish should be put out in the sun- 
light and fed there. j\Iy rearing ponds were of yellow 
pine plank, 250 feet long, 3 feet wide and 3 feet deep, 
with water 2 feet deep, made of 2-inch plank on sides 
and i-inch on bottom, nailed to outside frames. This 
stretch was divided into six compartments by double 
screens of No. 8 wire-cloth, 18 inches apart, with a 
dam between the screens that was i inch higher than 
the pool below. If fish passed one screen they might 
be dipped out before passing the next one, for the little 
fellows will get through a crack if there is one. The 
screens were to prevent crowding in any part of the 
long rearing pond and to facilitate feeding. The fish 
in the upper pool fared best, for in addition to liver 
they had the first pick of the small crustaceans which 
came in from the reservoir. 

As the flow through these pools was about 600 gal- 
lons per minute, it was too strong for the little fellows 
all the time, and in a straight-away run a tired trout 
would be washed against the lower screen and die 
there. To prevent this there was a series of obstruc- 
tions put in, which created eddies of rest for the weary. 
These were either alternate projections from the sides, 
as in some fishways, or with dams clear across, but 
with the top two inches below the surface ; four inches 
below this was a dam extending from above the surface 
to six inches below it. This arrangement caused the 
water to flow up from the bottom, over the dam and 
to the bottom again, leaving comparatively still water 
in the upper part, and after stemming the strong bot- 
tom current for a while a fish could find rest above ; it 



io6 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

also kept food swirling around, for there were eddies 
and not a straight flow, and it also kept the bottom 
clean. In the ten "baby ponds" of 24 feet long, as de- 
scribed, we put 8,000 to 10,000 babies in the upper 




ones, leaving the three or four lower ones empty, but 
screened. The little fellows would get into these 
through cracks in the planks, loose screens or other 



Trout Breeding. I07 

apertures, and then we would net them out and pui 
them in the ponds above, for down stream were their 
yearhng brothers, who would take them in out of the 
wet with pleasure. 

In July they need assorting in order to keep the larg- 
est together, so that the smallest will have a chance to 
o-et their share of food, and the sorting should be done 

to 

every six or eight weeks. 

In September they are down into the yearling ponds 
and the yearlings let into the upper breeding pond, for 
we may get a few small eggs from some, which in No- 
vember are twenty months old, counting from March 
of the year before. 



CHAPTER VII. 



STREAMS. 



As a rule a stream has to be taken as we find it, but 
often it can be improved for trout breeding or for fish- 
ing. If possible, make it more crooked, with deep 
pools, fallen logs for hiding places and shade, culti- 
vate alders or willows along the banks for shade and in- 
sect harbors, and, in fact, make as wild a stream of it, 
and one as difficult to fish, as it is possible, and you 
have done all that can be done to better it. Shade is 
loved by trout and it also keeps the waters cool. 

If you contemplate draining a swamp where cool 
springs trickle all over, and think of making a trout 
stream of the collected waters, the farther you can get 
from a straight line the better. Nature always works 



io8 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

to destroy straight lines, and no natural stream ever 
ran straight ; even if water is fond of making a short- 
cut, it is still fonder of following the line of least re- 
sistance, and will dig out soft banks and make curves. 

If the banks are equally soft in a straight ditch where 
there is a good flow, the water will dig in at one side, 
rebound to the other, and so go back and forth until, if 
let alone, the stream will crook. See any natural 
stream coming down a level meadow — it is crooked. 

A trout does not love a sweeping, continuous cur- 
rent in a straight stream, but prefers pools, shallows, 
rapids, and all the variations which occur in natural 
streams, where it can exercise in the rapids or rest as 
it chooses. The more difficult it is made to reach the 
banks, through vines and alders, and the harder it is 
made to cast the fly or to wade the stream, the better 
the fishing will be to experts, and the more the angler 
will enjoy the hard-earned trout he gets from it. 

Moderately still places for spawning should be pro- 
vided, and if there is no gravel in the stream, dump in 
several wagon loads at different shallow places, fc-r if 
there is no gravel in your stream the trout will leave it 
in spawning time and seek gravel elsewhere, and your 
stream will be barren. 

If it is a brawling mountain brook little can be done 
unless to deepen pools and make places where there 
will be eddies in times of freshets, so that the trout will 
not be washed out of their homes. Their tendency is 
to run up stream at such times, and they will do it if 
they can. 

The following, translated for "The Literary Digest," 
shows the peculiarities of currents in streams : 

"The phenomena exhibited by rivers are treated in 
an article in "Der Stein der VVeisen," Vienna, June 15. 



Trout Breeding. 109 

We reproduce the diagrams and give a translation of 
part of the text below : 

'' 'The most important factor in determining the cur- 
rent of a river is its speed, which increases with the fall 
and the quantity of water and diminishes with increase 
of the width of the channel. The speed varies also 
with the interior friction and with the friction of the 
water against the banks. . . . 

" 'The result of this is that not all parts of the cur- 
rent along a cross-section are moving at equal speed. 
The velocity increases in a vertical direction from the 
ground toward the surface, but it is greatest not at the 
surface but a little distance beneath it ; likewise it in- 
creases at the surface itself from the banks toward the 
middle. The lines of equal velocity in a cross-section 
take the form of half-elipses convex downward. It 
must be remarked further that the surface of the water 
is not horizontal, but sometimes convex and sometimes 
concave. It is the first in case a considerable mass of 
water with higher velocity (as at high water) moves 
in mid-stream, so that the middle of the river conveys 
more water than the sides. When the water is falling, 
a greater amount of water is flowing away at the mid- 
dle, and the surface becomes concave. ... In the 
Mississippi these oscillations of level measure as much 
as two metres (six feet). 

" 'Owing to the shape of the bed of the stream, espe- 
cially at the bottom, the water is deviated from a 
straight line, so that the line of greatest depth in the 
stream is curved. ... If we observe the move- 
ment of the water from the banks to the middle of the 
stream we find that the water in the middle moves 
downward and then in a spiral path approaches first the 
bottom and then the bank.' 



1 10 Modem Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

"The author next proceeds to describe the formation 
of eddies, the commonest case being illustrated in Fig. 




Fic. I. 



I, which needs no explanation, the direction and course 
of the current being represented by arrows. Fig. 2 
shows a curious spiral motion of the water due to the 
fact that the current on the two sides of the channel 
sometimes moves with different velocities, setting up a 
tendency to form a series of eddies. Fig. 3 shows the 
formation of two kinds of eddies, one in front and one 
behind an obstructing point of land, which approaches 
so near to the opposite bank as to deflect the current 
noticeably, producing the phenomenon known in the 
Danube as 'SchzvalV (swell). Finally we have the 
continuous circling movements known as whirlpools. 
which require deep water and such conformation of th^ 



Trout Breeding, 



III 



banks as to direct the current in exactly the proper 
place for their formation. The article concludes with 
the following description of flood-phenomena : 

'' Tn a swiftly flowing freshet the current at the 
surface is mostly in wave-motion. At the banks arise 
by reflection cross-waves which form with the others 
by interference of what are usually called "white caps."^ 



^ 



^< 





Fig. 



All the phenomena that appear during quiet flow are 
heightened in these times of flood — the eddies, the 
spiral movements, the whirlpools. Also the rapid wear- 
ing away of the sandy banks in places where the fric- 
tion of the current is most powerful makes the whole 
proceeding evident to the eye.' " 



112 Modern Fishcultnre in Fresh mid Salt Water. 



CHAPTER VIIL 

PONDSo 

The first thing to be considered is the i»nt€vntion of 
the owner and what he wishes to do with his pond or 
ponds. He may want as large a pond as possible in 
which trout will feed themselves and afford him fish- 
ing for himself and friends, or to market some trout 




Fig. 3. 

each spring. He may wish to have a hatchery and 
rearing ponds to stock his main pond with, or to have 
a series of ponds in which to grow trout on artificial 
food. 
There ^re several ways in which trout may be culti- 



Trout Breeding. ^^3 

vated, dependent upon the extent and character of the 
water and the inchnation of the owner as to the amount 
of time he cares to devote to it, and the expense which 
he is wihing to incur in beginning, which, as in most 
other aftairs, bears some relation to the prospective re- 
suhs. With proper facihties, intelligent fishculture 
will prove as remunerative as any of the minor indus- 
tries of the farm, such as bee and poultry keeping, but 
it is only very rare and exceptional places where it can 
be made a separate and distinct business which would 
warrant a person in devoting his whole time to it. 

Where the spring rises upon a farm and flows some 
distance through it, with some fall and space to make 
ponds, the conditions are most favorable. It is very 
difficult to give directions for making trout ponds 
which will be applicable to all places, but it is safe to 
say that the very worst location and form for them is 
in a ravine where they are made by a series of dams 
thrown across. Such an arrangement is sure to come 
to grief, sooner or later, and if the dams are so strongly 
made as to resist an unusual flood from suddenly melt- 
ed snow, or heavy rains, then the leaves and other riff- 
raff will clog the screens until the increased pressure 
carries them away and the fish have a chance to escape. 
The smaller the trout the more difficult it is to confine 
them, not only on account of their ability to escape 
through a small opening, but in consequence of their 
desire to continually seek that opening— a desire which 
is intense during their first year of life, but which de- 
creases until it is so much diminished that large fish, of 
say three-quarters of a pound, can hardly be driven 
from deep water. 

If only one pond is contemplated in which the fish 
are to be placed to seek their own food and care for 



1 14 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

themselves, then it may be made as large as the stream 
which supplies it will admit of — that is, it must not be 
so large that the water will get above 70° Fahr., in the 
bottom of the pond. Depth will give coolness, or if 
there are springs in the bottom the fish will congregate 
there at the hottest times, while the warmer water at 
the surface and shallow edge is favorable for the pro- 
duction of insect life for their food. The stream above 
can be covered with gravel as a spawning ground, and 
the young will have a chance to escape being devoured 
by the larger fish by keeping in the shallows. 

A pond of this kind was made at West Bloomfield, 
N. Y., on the farm of Mr. Stephen H. Ainsworth, a 
gentleman who was among the first to engage in trout 
culture in New York, beginning about the year 1858. 
He had a marshy spot of ground, formed by many 
small springs, whose united currents in the dryest times 
made a stream scarcely larger than a leadpencil ; and 
digging this out he made a pond 50x100 feet, which 
was 16 feet deep, and covered over, where he raised 
many fish under great difiiculties. In a dry season the 
supply barely equaled the evaporation, and no water 
passed from the pond ; and on several occasions he lost 
his largest fish from the heat, until, in the year 1871, 
he removed the trout and substituted black bass. Yet 
he had accomplished enough to be an authority upon 
trout culture in that day, and is now quoted to show 
what can be done with little means, although I should 
never advise any one with only his facilities to make 
an attempt at trout raising. And the point to which 
attention should be directed is the ratio of depth to sur- 
face in his pond ; if he had exposed more surface to the 
weather, or made his pond less deep, he probably would 
never have kept a trout through the first summer. In 



Trout Breeding. 115 

cases of a rise in the temperature the large fish are the 
first to sufifer. 

LARGE SINGLE PONDS. 

It is difficult to give directions which will be suit- 
able for all places, but I will repeat that a dam in a 
ravine is the worst form. In such a place it seems bet- 
ter to make a small dam, and lead the water from it into 
ponds at the side of the ravine, and let the floods go 
down the old channel. My own ponds, at Honeoye 
Falls, Monroe County, New York, were made in a 
piece of low, flat land, with a plough and road scraper, 
usmg the earth, gravel, etc., taken out to fill up around 
the ponds. Afterward they were finished with pick 
and shovel, and a dry stone wall laid around them 
merely to hold the banks, but they were small, only 
60x15 feet and 5 feet deep. The first one built was 
laid in cement, but was no better than the others. In 
some places t'lere is muck enough to pay for the dig- 
ging in manure ; but if the water can be kept off, such 
ponds are not expensive. Here is the cost of one of 
mine of the dimensions above given : 

Two men and team two days $10.00 

One man with shovel two days 3.00 

Team and man hauling stone three days.. . 10.50 

Man laying wall three days 4-5o 

Screen boxes , . . . . 3.00 

Man one day ditching » i-50 

Total ,......$32.50 

The cost of stone was not added, as there was a 
quarry on the farm. 



1 16 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

Naturally sloped banks of soil, sodded to below the 
water's edge, are best for all ponds over 100x200 feet, 
but surface water must be kept out. All ponds of the 
size named I call "large,'' because when we come to 
consider the "small ponds" of the professional fish- 
culturist it will be found that they are so narrow that 
every fish in them may be seen at all times. 

The single large pond can only be worked to its 
greatest capacity by having a hatchery, taking and 
hatching the eggs, rearing yearlings and turning them 
out in the following spring after the water has been 
drained off and all trout of the previous year taken out, 
thus raising and marketing two-year-old trout each 
year, and a trout above that age is worth no more than 
any other fish, in market. See chapter on "Market- 
able Trout." All trout ponds should be drawn down 
once a year, or the trout will have a muddy flavor from 
decaying vegetation. 

The bottom of the pond should be flat, if not level, 
and the fish should be removed with a net, instead of 
draining off the water to take them out. One of my 
mistakes will illustrate this : An original idea, one of 
those which so often come out of the little end of the 
horn, was to have a drain-pipe at the bottom of the 
pond stopped with a plug, and then make a deeper 
place in the centre, so that when the water was drawn 
off the fish would be all there ready to be dipped out 
with a hand or scoop net. What could be more handy ? 
An improvement ! After being in use three years it 
became necessary to take out the large trout and trans- 
fer them to another pond, and the water was drawn off. 
When about a foot was left the fish began to get 
alarmed and rush around, stirring up the water, which 
had appeared like crystal, until the motion of the fish 



Trout Breeding. 117 

could be seen, and when drawn down as low as pos- 
sible they naturally gathered in the pit, where they 
were dipped into tubs of clean water by a man in rub- 
ber boots. While in the pit they began to show signs 
of distress by keeping their noses out of the water, and 
the man who was dipping them said : "It smells like 
gunpowder." Then another idea, not original, dawned : 
the fish were being asphyxiated by the foul gas or sul- 
phureted hydrogen ! 

The sluice at the inlet was opened, but too late. Out 
of the 2,500 fine breeding fish, only 39 were saved ; 
they died even after being placed in fresh water while 
still breathing, and an expensive lesson in the dear 
school of experience was learned. I had seen the 
Southern darkies muddy ponds when collecting speci- 
mens for me, and knew that this gas, which lies at the 
bottom of all waters in which there is anything to de- 
cay, was a deadly poison if stirred, but the thought 
never occurred that the fish would do their own "mud- 
dying," as the darkies called it. 

This experiment shows another fact : fish which feel 
secure in from three to four feet of water, and show 
no alarm at persons walking at the edge of the pond, 
and which will come readily to the surface to feed in 
your presence, or even take it from your hand, will, in 
water of not over a foot in depth, be as timid as wild 
fish just taken from the brook. Their sense of secur- 
ity is gone; hence it is better to take them with a net 
large enough to sweep the pond. It also shows what a 
little oversight or false reckoning may do toward sweep- 
ing away the results of expenditure and labor. In fact 
there is none among our domestic animals more diffi- 
cult to manage, for the beginner, than trout, if they may 
be allowed to be domesticated; and their tendency to 



1 1 8 Modem Fishcultufe in Fresh and Salt Watef. 

go astray is excelled by the element in which they live, 
which is notorious for having a way of its own, which 
is never our way, and for seeking it at all times ; hence 
in trout culture the great difficulties to be overcome 
are, to confine the water so that it is secure under ex- 
traordinary strains of flood and accident and to con- 
fine the fish — the latter being hardly as difficult as the 
former. 

If the owner does not care to go into the business of 
hatching trout for a succession, as described, he should 
provide good spawning places such as are mentioned 
in the preceding chapter, and see that nothing molests 
the spawning beds in winter. In this way he may get 
a few trout which escape the old ones, which will keep 
them from becoming too plenty. 

PONDS IN A SERIES. 

In making a series of ponds in which fish of different 
sizes are to be kept and fed a dififerent system is pur- 
sued, the ponds being made small, in order that the 
water may be changed quickly, and so sustain more 
fish, and the stock can be seen and its condition known 
at all times. Such ponds may be 50 to 60 feet long by 
10 to 12 wide and 4 to 6 deep, with sides of clay, if that 
is the material dug through, stone, or wood. A spawn- 
ing race should be made at the upper end, 20 to 30 feet 
long by 4 feet wide, the bottom sloping from i to 2 
feet where it enters the pond ; this will give the pond a 
shape like a long-necked bottle. ' 

There should be a fall of at least six inches from the 
pond above into the spawning race, more if the lay of 
the land will permit, in order to aerate the water. For 
need of this see chapter on "Transportation of Fish." 



Trout Breeding. IIQ 

The raceway should be covered with gravel at all 
times ; for if the fish are not well, or are troubled with 
parasites, they resort to swift water and gravel bot- 
toms CO rub their sides and clean themselves. This 
gravel should be from half an inch to an inch or more 
in diameter. 

In facing the pond with boards the pressure of the 
earth must be provided for, or the sides will soon fall 
in, or at least become badly bulged. To prevent this, 
lay timbers on the bottom and frame the uprights into 
them; nail the boards on the outside of the uprights, 
which should extend above the ground and be braced 
apart by joists running across the pond a foot or more 
above water. Even these will spring in time if not 
quite stiff. Ponds well built require but little work to 
keep them in order— an occasional stopping of muskrat 
or of crawfish holes, and in the spring to repair dam- 
age from frost, if any, or to patch up a bank or wall. 
There are hard soils where neither wood nor stone are 
needed (except on the spawning races, whose sides 
should be vertical), but may be made at a slope more or 
less inclined. Willows planted near the pond are valu^ 
able as shade trees, or floats of boards may be of use in 
keeping the water cool, besides being a sort of protec- 
tion from the little kingfisher. 

Perhaps an account of the way I made the ponds for 
the New York State hatchery at Cold Spring Harbor, 
Long Island, will be of interest, for they involved great 
labor. I took charge on January i, 1883, and started 
work. An old building was used to hatch eggs .ob- 
tained elsewhere, and there was a spring reservoir some 
300 feet long by 20 wide, which had been made to turn 
a turbine wheel in the old building. This reservoir 
was high enough to bring water into troughs on the 



120 Modern Fishcidture in Presh and Salt Watev. 

floor of the second story, from where it went to the 
floor below and was again used. Some holes in 
swampy land below had been intended for trout ponds, 
but they were covered with water from the harbor at 
high tide and geese swam up to the hatchery. 

The north side of the island is hillv, some hills being 
200 feet above tide, and they are glacial drifts, sand, 
clay, gravel, etc., plowed out from the mainland by the 
ice. Such a hill was within 500 feet, and I filled the 
old holes with sand, leveling the swamp. Then 
"ponds" were staked out and left as the sand was 
dumped around them, on the principle that the Irish- 
man said cannon were made ; said he : "They take a 
long hole and pour brass around it." So we made 
ponds. These were temporary ponds, merely for use 
until the State could afford better, and the raceways 
were made of the cheapest hemlock boards. 

In 1887 there was an appropriation for a new hatch- 
ery made at the insistence of Commissioner Blackford, 
and 1 planned to put it as high as the inflow from the 
reservoir would bear, as the water went from the hatch- 
ery to the ponds, and when it was up high we could 
control it. When the ground was staked out for the 
building the northwest corner was three feet above 
ground and the southeast was thirteen feet in the air. 
It looked queer, but the levels were correct. The foun- 
dation was built and I filled the grounds until there 
was no queer look about it. The old ponds were filled 
and new ones of sand built with their bottoms where 
the old surface was. 

For a time it was dangerous to step near a pond, but 
it settled hard. Walks and flower-beds were laid out 
and a road made east of the ponds, which is as solid 
to-day as can be. The sand holds water well. The 



Trout Breeding. 121 

carting of sand and gravel cost the State much money, 
but it is worth it. It is the most important hatchery 
in the State of New York to-day. I estabhshed the 
culture of smelts, lobsters and tomcods there, and it 
Mr. Blackford had not been removed from the Com- 
mission for political reasons I would have made a park 
of the place and have gone on with experiments in 
hatching oysters and clams. But a change of adminis- 
tration led to my discharge, and to-day a great un- 
sightly ice-house stands in the centre of what was to be 
my "park," and there is a stable where a "conserva- 
tory" for water plants and the breeding of fresh water 
crustaceans and insects was planned ; and my dream of 
a trout park and all its adjuncts is over. Blessed be 
the small-souled politicians, for they will never develop 
into anything greater ! 



DRAINS. 

If the lay of the land permits it, there should be some 
way of lowering the water in order to clean the pond. 
If the pond is dug in the soil there should be a drain- 
pipe put m, and this, if of wood, may be stopped by a 
plug. But a plug is difficult to get out when the water 
is several feet deep; a box on the inner end with a 
sliding gate which can be lifted by a hook fitting into a 
hole is better. Do not plug the lower end of the pipe 
and leave the upper end open or you have a harbor for 
eels, water-snakes, or at least a hiding place for a large 
cannibal trout, for a trout of that kind prefers solitude. 
If the drain is a square box-trunk it may be turned up 
at a right-angle and' used as an overflow stand-pipe, if 
the water is not required to be kept up for any reason. 



122 Modern Fishciiltiire in Fresh and Salt Water. 

In this case make a sliding groove for the dams, which 
may be hfted one by one, and are kept down by pins or 
wedges at the top. 

'Tile-pipe are not good for drains. I have laid them 
and relaid them many times, cementing them most care- 
fully and then reinforced the joints with another coat- 
ing of cement, but tree roots would force their way in 
somehow and either fill the pipe or break it. At Cold 
Spring Harbor, New York, I piped a spring from an 
upper level in six-inch tile-pipe, and it filled up with 
roots. In one case the root of a locust tree had found 
an entrance, and while only as thick as a sheet of letter- 
paper and half an inch wide where it went in, we took 
out thirty-seven feet of branching, matted roots, which 
nearly filled the pipe. Then I had the pipe relaid with 
extra care, but to no purpose ; the roots would have 
water and knew how to get it, even where there was no 
leak. Here is a chance for a question about the habits 
of tree roots in their search for water; but having 
fought this "instinct" of roots for many years, I have 
given up trying to solve the riddle. 

Remembering these things, when we obtained an- 
other spring to bring down I bought four-inch iron 
''soil pipe," caulked the collars with oakum and then 
ran lead around on the oakum. After this the lead 
was caulked, and the pipe will carry water for a cen- 
tury without interference from roots. This method, 
and pump logs, are the only means I know of to con- 
vey water underground without interference from 
roots, if there are trees near. A willow or a locust 
will send roots a hundred yards for water, if it is there, 
while on the other side of the tree the roots might not 
extend fifty feet. 

It is said that iron-filings mixed with cement will 



Trout Breeding. 123 

keep roots from the joints of drain tile. Having no ex- 
perience with this, it is mentioned without comment. 



DAMS. 

These cannot be too carefuUy made to contend with 
pressure, leakage, muskrats, crawfish, frost and other 
things which are ever working to help water get to the 
lowest possible point. The following is from a news- 
paper which came after this chapter was begun : 

NuNDA, N. Y., Jan. 30, 1899. — Miller's dam went out 
this morning. The washout, which resulted from un- 
dermining by muskrats, entails heavy loss to mill own- 
ers who have utilized the water. The disaster occurred 
at a time when the valuable ice crop was nearly ready to 
harvest. In building a dam, whether of earth, stone, 
logs or a combination of any or all of these materials, 
the greatest care must be taken to lay the foundation so 
deep that no trickle of water excavation, of muskrat or 
crawfish can go under it. and at the sides the dam should 
extend so far as to prevent such mishaps. 

So much depends upon the nature of the ground and 
the materials to be used that it is impossible to go fur- 
ther into the construction of dams than to say: Make 
them about twice as strong as you think they need be 
and — then make them a little stronger. 



SCREENS FOR PONDS. 

Screens should be made at least ten times larger than 
the space required for the water. For instance, if the 
flow will pass through a hole six inches square, the 



124 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

screen should be at the least calculation nineteen inches 
each way, giving 361 square inches, which will allow 
for some portions of it to become clogged, and yet pass 
the water through easily ; this also diminishes the 
chance of stoppage by its slower flow. A good form 
for a small outlet is a trough, say six feet long by two 
feet wide and twenty inches deep, with a dam near the 
lower end about fifteen inches high. When the screens 
are placed in this, above the dam, slanting the top down 
stream at an angle of 45 degrees, it gives a good screen 
surface, the dam being placed at the height at which 
the water is to stand in the pond and the screen made to 
slide between slats. Great care must be taken in setting 
such a trough, if in earth, that the water does not work 
around and under it, or that frost does not lift it out of 
place ; the former may be provided for by wide flanges, 
which make a sort of bulkhead and obstruct the direct 
passage of crawfish, earthworms or other borers, which, 
by starting a small leak, will soon cause a large one 
before its presence is suspected. To guard against up- 
heaval by frost, in a climate where the brook trout love 
to dwell, is a more diflicult matter ; but my own experi- 
ence on this point leads to a preference for light soils 
for tamping aroimd the outlet box, instead of clay, 
which [ first used on account of its resistance to water, 
but afterward abandoned, after a winter's fight with 
frost, in favor of a sandy, gravelly soil which was found 
to serve the purpose as well, as far as the frost was con- 
cerned, but which afforded excellent digging for the 
crawfish (fresh-water lobster) with which the stream 
was infested, and whose tunnels, once made in clay, 
never by any chance closed up ; and, knowing their dis- 
like to work in either sawdust or tanbark, a space of 
about a foot was filled with these materials so that there 



Trout Breeding. 125 

was a barrier running around the box, backed in front 
and rear by soil which was thought to be the least affect- 
ed by frost. 

The screens should be made with as large spaces be- 
tween the slats or wires as the size of ehe fish demands, 
and it will be found convenient to have the outlet boxes 
of the different ponds and the frames all of one size, so 
as to be readily interchangeable. The wires or slats for 
the fish of half a pound and over may have a half inch 
space between them, and for this purpose well galvan- 
ized iron wire is best, or, if not convenient, a screen can 
be made of planed lath, set edgeways ; while for year- 
lings well tarred wire cloth of four wires to the inch is 
necessary, and for the fry during the first months at 
least fourteen wires to the inch. Screens for the inlets 
are best placed perpendicularly, in order that no trout 
may lie under them and shoot up stream when the 
screen is raised. The disposition of water to find its 
own way, and that way being always different from our 
way, combined with the disposition of trout, in their 
younger days, to prefer any location rather than that 
which we have provided for them, renders the subject 
of screens and appliances for confining them a very im- 
portant one to the fishculturist, and one liable to defeat 
all his calculations and waste all his time, labor and 
money, if not properly considered. I have kept sharks 
and whales in confinement, and have seen the v/ildest of 
beasts and birds so kept, but of all animals that man 
confines there is none so uncertain to be found in the 
morning, where it was apparently so secure the night 
before, as a brook trout of an inch and a half long. It 
is an impossibility to confine them in a stream, and very 
difficult in a pond, as a crack or worm hole in a board, 
or in the earth or masonry, will be found by a hundred 



126 Modern Fishcidture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

little eyes, and its size tested by half as many heads: 
and if water flows through it, they are very apt to fol- 
low, no matter where it may lead, nor whether return is 
possible. The instinct of a trout impels it to jump at a 
fall or in going up stream, hence provision must be 
made to stop them from leaping over the inlet screen by 
a projecting board or other device, more especially in 
the fall of the year, when they wish to ascend to the 
upper waters to seek suitable places for spawning. 

If the fry are kept for the first nine months or a year 
in "rearing boxes," it is not so hard to confine them as 
it is in the outdoor ponds, where the woodwork has to 
be fitted into the earth ; and this system has its advan- 
tages, which are security of confinement, compactness, 
the ease with which they can be inspected and the larger 
ones removed from their weaker brethren, and the pro- 
tection from bird, beast, reptile and insect enemies to 
which their relatives in the outdoor pond are exposed. 
To counterbalance these advantages, we have in the 
rearing boxes more care and labor, and less natural 
food. Still, if the labor can be given, it is the surest 
way, for the first three months at least, after which time 
they are better able to stand the exposure of outdoor 
ponds and avoid their enemies, which decrease in num- 
bers with increasing size. 

There is always one fence in summer time which de- 
tains the trout more efifectually than any screen. This 
is the stream of warm water which the trout brook emp- 
ties into, and, although they may seek its depths for 
food in winter after running down off the spawning 
beds, the first hint of a rising temperature sends them 
back to the cooler spring waters. 

A good self-cleaning screen for large trout is a re- 
volving cylinder of wire cloth. Make disks of eighteen 



Trout Breeding. 127 

inches with four strips to stiffen the cyHnder and cover 
this with No. 2 wire cloth. Run an axle through it and 
set it so that it will revolve in the current, with six 
inches of water to turn it ; i. e., set it in water to that 
depth. A half inch btlow the cylinder set a board 
edgewise under its centre, and all leaves and fine trash 
will be passed without clogging. This can be made to 
fit a trough or box. A coarse screen should be placed 
in front of it to catch sticks. 



CHAPTER IX. 

TEMPERATURES. 

There are extreme temperatures which limit the lives 
of all things, animal or vegetable; and of all animals 
the fishes are the most sensitive to sudden changes. 
Water in lakes or streams is slow to change, and, while 
animals which live on land endure changes of a dozen 
degrees in twenty-four hours occasionally in our north- 
ern climate, it takes many days or even weeks to make 
such a change in running waters or in a large, deep 
pond. Even after the surface of a pond is frozen the 
water at the bottom will be found warmer than near 
the surface if the pond has much depth or if there are 
bottom springs. 

I think our brook trout would prefer an even tem- 
perature of about 60° Fahr., equal to 10° Reaumur or 
to 13° centigrade. It ranges "from Maine to Dakota 
and north to the Arctic Circle and south to the Chatta- 



128 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

hoochie river" (Jordan). But in the southern portion 
of its habitat it is confined to streams in the Blue Ridge 
and is not found in the warmer waters of the low lands 
or near the coast. 

About 70° Fahr. = 17° R. or 22° Cent, is the limit 
of heat that a brook trout will endure ; although if the 
flow be very strong they may stand it for a little time, 
but will suffer and die if the water does not cool soon. 
On a cloudy, damp day a trout will live longer on land 
than in water of 80° Fahr. 

Our lake trout cannot endure as warm water as the 
brook trout can. It has its limit at about 65° Fahr. 
For the rainbow and the brown trout it has been claimed 
that they will endure water that is slightly warmer than 
brook trout can stand, but I am not prepared tc affirm 
or deny the claim, never having submitted then to the 
test. 

Ice on a trout pond wall do no harm if the pond has a 
circulation of water through it, but a shallow pond with 
no flow that freezes entirely over, leaving no air holes, 
is a deathtrap for fish of any kind. Such ponds are 
common along the upper Mississippi, being merely holes 
where the high water leaves many fish. I once chopped 
through the ice on such a pond and there was a power- 
ful odor of dead fish ; they had smothered. 



CHAPTER X. 

FOOD FOR ADULT TROUT — MUSSELS. 

At Cold Spring Harbor, N. Y., I made trial of many 
kinds of food for both adult trout and fry, in order not 



Trout Breeding. 129 

only to find the best food but also the cheapest. I began 
with the old standard food, beef livers, but they were 
only to be had from New York City, thirty-two miles 
by rail, as no one butchered regularly in that part of 
Long Island. Then we tried the black mussels, Myti- 
his edulis, which we boiled for convenience in opening, 
and the fish appeared to thrive on them for a few 
months, when some sloops came into the inner harbor 
loaded with mussels for the city market, and so cleaned 
up the crop that my men could not make it profitable to 
collect them any longer. These salt water mussels at- 
tach themselves to rocks, tim.bers or any stationary ob- 
ject, and were plenty. They hang in crowded bunches, 
which can be gathered in great numbers. The gray 
mussel was not so plenty there and is not eaten by men, 
and I can't speak of it as fish food. I made a mussel 
shucker, which worked well. It used to take a man 
half a day to cook and open two bushels of these mol- 
lusks, and, believing that something could be devised to 
do the work quicker, I made a cylinder of wire-cloth of 
three-quarter inch mesh, with wooden ends, and hung 
so as to be revolved by a crank. A door in the netting 
admitted the boiled mussels and a few revolutions 
dropped the meat into a box below, leaving the shells in 
the cylinder. But the usefulness of the "mussel jerker," 
as the men termed it, was cut short by the loss of the 
mussels, as related. 

SOFT CLAMS. 

Then we tried the soft clams, or manninose, Mya are- 
raria, both raw and cooked. We liked them and the 
fish took them well, but our yield of eggs was scant 
that fall, as there were more barren trout than usual. 



130 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

Whether this state of things was caused by the food or 
not is impossible to say, as it was tried only one season 
because the neighbors complained that we were taking 
too many clams from the harbor, and we stopped. A 
bushel in the shell weighs 64 pounds and the raw meat 
16 pounds, but when boiled they only weigh 8 pounds. 

HORSE MEAT. 

There was a ''knacker'^ a few miles away who killed 
'^old or injured horses, sold their skins, bones and hoofs, 
and said that he disposed of the meat to the kennels, of 
which Long Island has several ; but "Frenchy" still had 
meat to sell, and I bought it free from fat and bone at 
four cents per pound. It was fed from November, 
1 89 1, to September, 1893, twenty-two months, and long 
^enough to form the opinion that fed raw, as we fed it, 
we did not want any more of it. The trouble was that 
it was not easily digested, as shown by the long stream- 
ers of white fibre which trailed behind the fish. Again 
we were short in the number of eggs which the trout 
should have yielded, and some fish had died from in- 
flammation of the lower intestines. 

Then I found a man in New York City who would 
furnish me beef livers at four cents per pound, and 
changed back to the *'old reliable." 

BEEF LIGHTS AND MAGGOTS. 

At Honeoye Falls, N. Y., in my first trials, I fed beef 
"'lights," as the lungs are called. They were fed raw 
and cooked, but were indigestible and showed the same 
white ''flags" that horse meat did. Then I tried mag- 



Trout Breeding. 13 1 

gots. Boxes or nail kegs, with slat bottoms, were sus- 
pended over the ponds, and in these the lights and 
other refuse meat was suspended. The flesh flies blew 
it and maggots hatched, grew and dropped into the 
ponds when the time came for them to go into tht^ 
ground to enter the pupa stage. It was a perfect foodj 
the trout taking it readily and growing finely, but ther^ 
was the objectionable odor. As the ponds were not 
near my house, the smell was not so objectionable to 
me, but there were many visitors, mere curiosity seek- 
ers, who complained. But this was not the only reason 
for its abandonment. Swarms of great carrion beetles, 
over an inch in length, came and either ate the meat, the 
maggots, or both, and I concluded that there should be 
more maggots per pound of lights and meat than I was 
getting, and I abolished the "maggot factories." 

Some years ago Mr. Charles G. Atkins, superinten- 
dent of the United States salmon hatching station at 
East Orland, Me., fed maggots, but he had his "fac- 
tories" on top of a hill and brought down the product in 
pai'.s or boxes. I think he used smaller apertures and 
excluded the beetles. 

Lest any one doubt the excellence of the larva of the 
flesh fly, which we term "maggots," as fish food, I will 
cite the fact that English anglers, who call them "gen- 
tles," scour them in bran for a dav or two and use them 
as bait for several kinds of fish, and Izaak Walton 
speaks of his "box of gentles." 



FISH. 

The flesh of fish, such as fresh-water chubs and 
suckers, or salt-water kinds which have little or no value 



132 Modern Pishctdture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

in market, are used with gx3od effect and are one of the 
natural foods of trout. 



HASLETS. 

"Sheep's haslets" are used east of New York — and 
that is a New England name for what New Yorkers 
call "plucks," meaning the heart, liver and lungs all at- 
tached to the windpipe as it is removed from the animal. 



NATURAL FOODS. 

If the fish are to forage for the whole or part of their 
food the pond should be stocked with such water plants 
as grow in spring water and then the crustaceans, gam- 
marus and asellus should be introduced. But beware of 



/ 




\ 



Gammarus (magnified three times). 



the burrowing crawfish, for it not only enters into com- 
petition with the trout for its crustaceans and insect lar- 
vae, but makes holes in dams. Besides this, it cannot be 
eaten by small trout when it is in the adult state, and 
when soft it hides. The gammarus is usually called 



Trout Breeding. 133 

''fresh- water shrimp," while the asellus, or "water asel," 
looks somewhat like the "sowbug" found in decayed 
wood. In some waters these crustaceans grow to the 
length of three-quarters of an inch, but usually they are 
smaller. Trout also eat newts or salamanders as well 
as snails, both the spiral and the ramshorn. Insect 
larvae will be apt to breed in the ponds without being 
especially introduced. The gammarus is greatly over- 




Cyclops, with eggs (magnified 40 diameters). 

rated as trout food. A few are eaten, but not in the 
proportion that is usually thought. My searching of 
stomachs of wild trout under two inches long showed, 
under the microscope, that Cyclops and Daphnia, two 
minute forms barely visible to the eye, were the most 

plentiful 

On Wilmurt lake, situated on top of a mountain in 
Herkimer County, N. Y., where no fish but brook trout 



134 Modern Fishcultiire in Fresh and Salt Water. 

live, I opened the stomachs of 247 trout that had been 
dressed for the table. No microscope was at hand, and 
there was much that could not be identified. From 
what was distinguishable a rough estimate was made. 
It was : Insects and their larvae, 80 per cent. ; newts, 15, 
and gammarus. 5. 

At Meacham lake, Northern Adirondacks, the result 
from 138 stomachs was: Insects and larvae, 60; newts, 
5 ; gammarus, 5 ; fish, 30. Therefore, I feel warranted 
in ranking the gammarus low in the list of trout foods. 
Still it has a value. Trout of a pound weight seldom 
eat it. 



HOW THEY FEED IN JAPAN. 

I have been visited by several Japanese gentlemen 
who are interested in fishculture. M. K. Ito, of Ho- 
kado Cho, Sappora, came here twice, and at the Cen- 
tennial Exposition in Philadelphia, in 1876, I often met 
Mr. Schizawa Akekio, attached to the commission of 
that country. Speaking several European languages 
with remarkable fluency, his desire to become ac- 
quainted with the methods of American fishculture was 
only equaled by his perseverance. Returning to Japan, 
he at once set to work to establish fish hatcheries, and 
in 1877 fish stations were made at Yuki, Kanawaga, 
Shirako and Saitama Ken, each of them with the ca- 
pacity of raising 30,000 fish. The number of these 
fishing establishments has of late been increased. The 
largest hatchery is at present at Shigaken. As cattle 
are never butchered in Japan, it became quite impossible 
to feed the young salmon on liver. Mr. Akekio, with 
a great deal of ingenuity, substituted the chrysalides of 



Trout Breeding. I35 

the silkworm, mixing them with flour, and he writes me 
that after having used this food for four years, he finds 
that the fish thrive on it remarkably well. An analysis 
of this food shows that it contains nitrogen substance in 
abundance, besides a suitable quantity of oily matter. 
It seems that the Japanese, for the last 200 years, have 
employed a method for propagating salmon by letting 
them spawn naturally and confining this reproduction 
to a fixed locality. 

In the River Tenegawa there is a natural spawning 
bed some 1,200 yards long by 50 wide. A fence is 
made above, and after the salmon ascend another fence 
is thrown across the stream below. After the fish have 
been inclosed for a week, their eggs become naturally 
fertilized, and the parent fish are caught. Another lot of 
fish are allowed to enter, and so the process is continued. 

Mr. Akekio states that in May, a year afterward, the 
healthy young fish go down to sea. The profits from 
the river must be large, as it supports, by netting the 
fish, some 750 families. Our most intelligent Japanese 
fishculturist has been in receipt of some McCloud River 
trout eggs, sent to him by Mr. B. B. Redding, Fish 
Commissioner of California, in 1877, ^^'^^ other species 
sent by Prof. Baird. Great difficulty was experienced 
at first in finding water of a right temperature, as the 
weather was warm, and there was no ice; still, in the 
face of a great many obstacles, 1,000 fish were saved. 
"From 1877 till the present time," Mr. Akekio writes, 
"the fish have grown satisfactorily, and their average 
weight is five pounds, and their greatest length one and 
a half foot." Both Japan and Germany are indebted 
to the United States for practical lessons in fishculture, 
and so far our American fishculturists have not been 
obliged to go abroad to learn their business. 



1 36 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 



PATENT FOODS. 

I have tried two kinds of patent food, or rather that 
of two makers, who put np food for dogs and pheas- 
ants. In both cases it was dried and full of small, 
sharp bone. A trout can digest a soft fish bone, but 
pieces of the skeleton of an ox or horse are a different 
matter. As they could not give me the meat free from 
bone we did not do much business. 

The following is from a circular : 

"Fine all-meat fish food, specially manufactured for 
feeding fish from the time the young fry are hatched. 
Used with the greatest success at the Caistor Fish 
Farm, Lincolnshire, England, and at many other places. 
Manufactured in five different grades — Nos. o, i, 2, 3 
and 4. No. o, finest ground for feeding young fry in 
the boxes, up to two months old ; No. i, for feeding fish 
from two to five months old ; No. 2, for feeding fish 
from five to eight months old ; No. 3, for feeding fish 
from nine to twelve months old ; No. 4, for feeding big 
fish. 

"Note. — No. 4 should be soaked before it is given to 
fish. Nos. I, 2 and 3 should not be soaked, but simply 
thrown lightly on the water. The fish will take the 
food as it gradually sinks to the bottom. Fish should 
not have anything coarser than No. o for the first two 
months after they are hatched." 

The food smells rancid, and the floating qualities of 
some of it let it go to the outlet uneaten. As this food 
appears to be made from a whole horse thrown into a 
grinder, of course the bone cannot be separated. The 
bone is good for poultry, but is too sharp for the in- 
testines of a trout, young or old. 



Trout Breeding. 137 



WHAT OTHERS SAY ABOUT FOOD. 

In 1891, with this book in mind, I sent out a circular 
which contained eight questions regarding trout cul- 
ture. As the answers relate to different chapters, I 
will divide them. Most unfortunately, I put two ques- 
tions in one — (No. 7) — which asked: "If you breed 
trout for market, do you find that it pays; and if so, 
what do you feed the adult fish and at what cost?" 
Many fishculturists, especially those connected with the 
Government or State hatcheries, merely replied: "I do 
not raise trout for market," and let the main question go 
unansw^ered. 

Here are some answers : 

"I feed on shrimp and branch minnows, suckers, 
carp, etc." — E. M. Robinson, Superintendent Mammoth 
Springs Hatchery, U. S. F. C, May 26, 1891. 

Albert Rackow, Elmont, Long Island, N. Y., says: 
"I feed my trout on beefs' hearts and minnows ; grow- 
ing 8,000 trout every year, and it pays a profit." 

W. L. Gilbert, Old Colony Trout Ponds, Plymouth, 
Mass. — "Yes, it pays. We feed sheep's plucks, which 
cost about one cent per pound at the hatchery." 

G. Hansen, Osceola Mills, Polk County, Wis. — 
"There is no money in feeding trout to two and three 
years old and then sell them for 50 cents per pound in 
the markets. It pays better to build bigger ponds — 
say one to five acres — where the fish can get natural 
food, and then have sportsmen come and fish for them, 
at say 25 cents per pound. In this case there is no food 
to buy and sportsmen near by can board with the pro- 
prietor. I had fishermen here who took in this way, 
in one day, 150 pounds of trout, and paid us at the 



138 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

same time for board. If a pond is handled in this 
manner I think there is money in it." 



CHAPTER XL 



PLANTING FRY. 



The proper time for planting fry is just previous to 
their first taking of food ; in other words, before the 
yolk sack is entirely absorbed. Just as they begin to 
swim from the bottom upward they should be removed 
instanter. It will not answer to wait longer, as the 
first hatched will become emaciated and weak, and if 
they do not die in transportation they will not try to 
secure food and will soon perish. Numerous failures 
in restocking depleted streams are attributed to keep- 
ing the fry too long in the hatching troughs. The 
most satisfactory results will always be obtained by 
planting the fry, when they have arrived at the proper 
size, in suitable waters, where there is an abundance of 
natural food, and here their instinct of self-preserva- 
tion will develop the same as in fish that are hatched 
naturally. 

I write this strongly, as I have steadily opposed feed- 
ing the fish and planting in the fall as "fingerlings," or 
the next spring as "yearlings," by the State Commis- 
sions, on account of the expense being greater than the 
advantages. The planting of yearlings has been advo- 
cated for the past eight or ten years and many papers 



Trout Breeding. 139 

have been read on the subject before the American 

Fisheries Society. 

It may be possible that one yearling trout, having 
escaped enemies of small size, is as good as ten fry. 
Admitting this to be true, for the sake of argument, 
then I say plant the ten fry, because it is cheaper to do 
so, if you are to put out a million or more for some 
State or Government hatchery. At the South Side, 
Sportsmen's Club, at Oakdale, Long Island, N. Y., 
they feed their fry until they are yearlings, remove the 
screens and let them find their way to their lakes. 
They have a fishculturist and one or two assistants, 
v^ho have little else to do, and the expense is only for 
food. Under the same circumstances I should do the 
same, while planting some fry in the head-waters of 
their many miles of streams. But, when in chargr. at 
Cold Spring Harbor, there was danger that the State 
Fish Commission would order me to feed fry to year- 
lings and plant them, and to do this would take money 
needed for new ponds ; and my only way to prevent this 
was by an indirect appeal to them not to enter upon 
such a wasteful course by papers read at the American 
Fisheries Society, and no yearlings, except a few sal- 
mon, were planted from that station while I was in 
charge. 

Having called it a wasteful way of planting fish from 
a State hatchery, it follows that I should prove the 
charge. A man would leave the hatchery with ten 
ten-gallon cans of fry, 5,000 in each can, for streams 
up the Hudson, and be on the way twenty-four hours, 
often more. To take 5,000 yearlings — and many of 
our yearlings were 9 inches, 23 mm., long — would re- 
quire him to make five trips, for ten cans is about all a 
man can attend to on a long trip, reckoning fifty cans 



140 Modern Fishciilture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

with 100 yearlings in each. When you multiply his 
railroad fares, freight, cartage and wages by five there 
is more expense than profit in the transaction. A trip 
which cost $25 would rtni up a big bill for five trips, 
and extra men would have to be put on the road. If 
you have long trips to make, plant fry, and, if neces- 
sary, increase your hatching capacity as many times as 
may be needed. Nature plants fry enough to keep up 
the stock if man does not interfere. 

I think the yearling heresy was started by Mr. Frank 
N. Clark, an old personal friend of mine, but with 
whom I have usually differed on minor points in fish- 
culture ; but even Mr. Clark has said that he could not 
rear all his fry to yearlings because of the expense. 
Then the late Col. McDonald, United States Commis- 
sioner of Fisheries, got the yearling craze and ham- 
mered at everybody who did not agree with him. He 
was an irritable, autocratic man, who could not bear to 
be opposed, and no one in his employ dared suggest 
a better way of doing anything. To illustrate this let 
me quote from the First Annual Report of the Com- 
missioners of Fisheries, Game and Forests, of the State 
of New York, for a portion of the year 1895, page 14: 
"Four years ago the late Colonel Marshall McDonald, 
then United States Fish Commissioner, writing to one 
of the staff of this Commission, said of one who was 
an ardent 'fry' man {i. e., one who believed in planting 
helpless fry as soon as they were ready to feed) : Tf 
he chooses to attack the policy of the United States 
Fish Commission in planting yearling fish, it will sim- 
ply stamp him as unprogressive and past his period of 
usefulness.' " 

This might mean me, or it might mean the Hon. 
Herschel VVhitaker, of the Michigan Fish Commis- 



Trout Breeding. 141 

slon, who stood, and still stands, with me on this ques- 
tion. Just why the New York Commission saw fit 
to quote this personal matter I have no opinion to 
offer. 



STOCK HEAVILY. 

At the close of 1898 I wrote the following for the 
"English Fishing Gazette" : 

"I believe in stocking heavily. Ten thousand trout 
fry to a mile of stream filled with chub and other fish 
arc^ as good as wasted. Make it 100,000 fry or 10,000 
yearlings to the mile, and then watch the result. If 
you do this in some fished-out streams \yith the two 
American species named above, you may hear from 
them." 

To this my friend Whitaker wrote to know if I had 
abandoned my stand on planting fry, as he saw that 1 
recommended planting "100,000 fry or 10,000 year- 
lings." My reply was that, as some people will plant 
yearlings, I wrote in that way, and asked him to look 
at the New York Report above quoted, saying to him : 
*'We did not attack McDonald's policy ; it was he who 
attacked ours ; and I do not consider healthy trout fry 
to be 'helpless' if planted at the heads of streams." 



TIME TO PLANT FRY. • 

Fry must not be planted or taken any journey in 
wagons or by rail until the sac is so nearly absorbed 
that they can sustain themselves in the water and have 



142 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

lost all disposition to lie on the bottom of the can, 
where they are liable to be killed by continuous shocks 
and bruises. Until the sac is nearly gone they cannot 
bear handling, but they grow stronger as the umbilicus 
is absorbed. 

In taking fry, as well as adult fish, great care must 
be taken of the two vital points — temperature and aera- 
tion. The temperature may be kept down by ice, or, 
better yet, snow, for ice, if in large pieces in the cans, 
will crush many fish, while snow is soft; an ice tray in 
the top of the can is best. 

As the trout exhaust the oxygen from the water 
more must be supplied. This is done in several ways ; 
by using a dipper and pouring the water a foot or more 
through the air; by drawing off a pailful through a 
siphon which has a strainer of perforated tin or of 
cheese-cloth in the upper end, and then|pouring it "back 
and forth in another pail a few times and returning 'it 
to the can. With ten cans these ways are too labor- 
ious, while an air pump is useless unless you have a 
fine strainer in the bottom to divide the air and keep it 
from coming up in large bubbles, which do little good, 
and the labor is too much. I prefer such a brass 
syringe as greenhouse men use for spraying plants, with 
a fine "rose" sprinkler on the end ; one and a half inches 
in diameter and twelve to fourteen inches in length. 
This is lighter and easier to carry than any of the other 
implements and is as effective ; fill the cylinder, raise it 
a foot above the water and drive the fine streams down 
into the can. At a temperature of 40° Fahr., three in- 
jections to each can every half hour when not moving 
should keep the fish at the bottom, for when they are 
suffering for air they will crowd to the surface for 'it. 
When they do this it will take continuous work for arj 



Trout Breeding. 143 

hour, and hard work, to get all the fish in ten cans 
down to the bottom again and breathing easily. Never 
let them get to the top ; treat them to an aeration every 
half hour by the watch, or oftener if they need it, but 
never let them suffer for a moment. 

When the water is sloshing about on a car or wagon, 
have no more water in the cans than can be carried 
with the covers off, and they need not be worked more 
than once in an hour or two if the water is cool. Take 
extra care when standing still for an hour or more ; 
there is then more danger of suffering. 

At the place of deposit compare the temperature of 
the brook to that in the cans by a thermometer, and if 
there is a difference of three degrees Fahr., set the can 
in the brook, adding a little brook water occasionally ; 
take an hour to this if necessary, and when you are 
satisfied that the fry will not be injured by the shock 
from a warmer or colder temperature, lower the mouth 
of the can and let them swim out. After all your trou- 
ble and expense you cannot afford to dump your fry in 
a hurry and trust to luck to their living through a 
shock. This is why I always preferred to send one of 
my own men to plant fry to having the owner of a 
stream come for them. No doubt millions of good, 
strong trout fry have been killed by the "dumping" 
process of some unthinking or ignorant man who 
thought: "Here's the brook and there's the fish; dump 
'em in.*' A man may be a very learned man and not 
know^ how to plant trout fry. 

In 1872 I submitted a plan for aerating water by 
pumps worked by a band on a car axle to Prof. Baird. 
This was afterward used by Mr. Stone in his aquarium 
car, and was no doubt again originated by him, for it 
was naturally the first plan that would suggest itself to 



144 Modern Fishcultiure in Fresh and Salt Water. 

one about to transport live fish on such a long and 
perilous journey, as he had undertaken to transport fish 
from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast." The above I 
wrote for "Rod and Gun," and it appeared in its issue 
of February 26, 1876. 

In 1874, with Mr. A. A. Anderson as an assistant, 
I tried to get 100,000 shad fry from Holyoke, Mass., to 
Germany, and failed. An account of this will be found 
in the chapter on "Shad." 



CHAPTER XII. 



TRANSPORTING ADULT FISH. 



The main things in taking live fish on railway or 
other journeys have been explained. We get oxygen 
from air, and fish get the same thing from water. A 
submarine diver can stay down long if air is pumped 
to him ; if it stops, he dies from the carbonic acid gas 
which his own lungs throw off. The case is the same 
with the fish. They are shut in a can where no oxygen 
can reach them except what comes to the water through 
its sloshing about in the motion of the car, if the cover 
is left ofi^, or such as you may give them by syringe, 
air pump or other mode of aeration (see chapter on 
''Transporting Trout Fry"). 

The next important point is temperature. If the fish 
are taken from icy water, or from spring water in win- 
ter, you may ice them heavily; but if you are taking 
fish from a pond in summer, say black bass or perch, 



Trout Breeding. 145 

do not reduce the temperature more than ten degrees 
or you may have either dead or barren fish in your 
ponds. The aeration of water, as before described, is 
hkc pumping air to the submarine diver — it means life. 

Large fish should not be sent in circular tanks, be- 
cause they will crowd to the side, which closes one gill 
cover and prevents the other from closing; hence they 
cannot breathe well and may soon die. 

Twenty pounds of trout will live four hours in 
twelve gallons of water if under 40° Fahr. Two 
pounds of trout will live for four hours in three gal- 
lons at 40®. 



'.>fer. 



SECTION II. 



OTHER TROUTS AND THE SALMONS. 

America is rich in species of Salmonidco. We have 
the Salino salar, with its variety Sebago, which is the 
only salmon of our east coast, and is identical with the 
salmon of the west coast of Europe. Excluding the 
whitefish and its relatives, we have of salmons chars 
and trouts — and we call all our chars "trout," the fol- 
lowing salmons, vS. salar, on the east coast. On the 
Pacific coast we have Oncorhynchus chouicha, the quin- 
nat or chinook; S. gairdneri, the steel-head or salmon 
trout; O. nerka, the redfish, blueback or sockeye ; O. 
keta, the dog salmon, and O. kisutch, the silver salmon. 

Of chars we have Salvelimis fontinalis, the eastern 
brook trout ; S. anreolus, the sunapee or golden trout of 
New Hampshire ; 5". namaycitsh, the lake trout east of 
the Missouri River; S. oquassa, the blueback trout of 
Maine, and S. mahna, the dolly varden, bull trout and 
western char, of the Columbia river basin and other 
waters of the west. 

Of true trouts we have SaUno irideiis, the rainbow 
trout ; S\ fario, the brown trout imported from Europe, 
and S. mykiss, the ''cut-throat" trout of the west — four- 
teen species, and all of them of value, more or less, ex- 
cept the dog salmon, which is eaten only by Indians. 

146 



Other T.\outs and the Salmons. 147 



CHAPTER XIIL 

THE SALMONS; 

As all that has been said of the breeding of brook 
trout is applicable to the salmon, there is little to be 
added under this head. The eggs are larger than those 
of trout and do not differ much in size, while in color 
they are of a beautiful "salmon" shade. 

The United States has a good salmon breeding estab- 
lishment at East Orland, Maine, where parent fish are 
obtained from the Penobscot ; but in Canada and New 
Brunswick there are larger ones, which have done grand 
work, despite the opposition of some ignorant fisher- 
men, who imagine that the hatcheries injure them in 
some way. In Norway, Sweden, Germany and other 
countries the salmon is artificially cultivated on a scale 
more or less large, but our neighbors to the north lead 
the work in this industry. 



THE PACIFIC SALMONS. 

Not more than three of the Pacific salmons are of 
much value. The best is the "king," or quinnat sal- 
mon, Oncorhynchus chouicha, and then comes the little 
"blueback" and the "steel-head." 

The quinnat salmon was introduced into our east- 
jsrn waters for a number of years by the million, and 
distributed in the rivers from Maine to Texas, and not 
one adult was ever caught on the Atlantic coast. In 
this case the failure was not due to light stocking, but 



148 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

to the absence of melting snows in early summer, which 
in the short Pacific streams affects the temperature at 
the mouths of the rivers. On Sept. 10, 1899, one 
weighing lo.i lbs. was taken in the St. Lawrence River 
near Cape Vincent, and identified by Mr. Livingston 
Stone. 

The "land-locked salmon," as it is miscalled, is not 
shut in by land, and can go to sea if ic wishes, but has 
for some reason lost this migratory instinct. In all 
respects except migration they are identical with 6^. 
salar. Mr. Charles G. Atkins has charge of the United 
States breeding station at Grand Lake Stream, Maine, 
and has stocked many suitable waters in different parts 
of the country. 

There is a tendency now to give this fish its Indian 
name of "winninish," some clinging to the French 
spelling of "ouannanish ;'' but if the French have no 
letter W in their language, we have. They spelled 
Wisconsin "Ouisconsin," but why should we do so? 
Let us call it "winninish," and spell it so in a good Eng- 
lish fashion. 

The winninish has thrived when it has been planted 
in deep, cool lakes. From the New York "Sun" of 
May 13, 1890, I clip the following: 

"Hammondsport, N. Y., May 12. — Lake Keuka was 
stocked with land-locked salmon fry four years ago. 
No evidence that the fish had prospered in the lake was 
developed until last season, when Trevor Moore caught 
a two-pound specimen of the salmon near the inlet of 
the lake at Hammondsport. Others were caught at 
different points along the lake, in each case while the 
anglers were fishing for other fish. A few^ days ago 
Frank Costerline was fishing for bullheads near the 
inlet of the lake, and caught three very large land- 



Other Trouts and the Salmons. 149 

locked salmon. A fourth, the largest of the lot, was 
hooked, but broke the line and escaped." 



CHAPTER XIV. 

OTHER TROUTS. 

BROWN TROUT {Salmo fario). 

And now I write of a fish which is a naturalized citi- 
zen, but, being a recent importation, has not taken the 
rank among us which it will work up to in future years. 
Confidence is said to be a plant of slow growth, and so 
is reputation. Recently Mr. R. B. Marston, editor of 
the London 'Tishing Gazette," said that he believed 
the brovn trout, Sahno fario, to be the best trout in the 
world. I agree with him. 

Those who believe that nothing can possibly come 
from Europe which may excel any native product, and 
allow prejudice to shut out all things not indigenous to 
America, will, of course, object to this statement. Let 
us compare the handsome char which we call "brook 
trout" with its kinsman, the brown trout, which is not 
a highly colored, fine-scaled "char," but is in the genus 
Salmo — a coarser fish, if you will, but a grand one. 

In support of this opinion I will quote an article from 
my pen, written in 1887, in the Bulletin of the United 



150 Modern Fishciilture in Fresh and Salt Water, 

States Fish Commission, entitled "Brown Trout in 
America" : 

*'In July, 1886, Mr. Frank J. Amsden, a banker, of 
Rochester, N. Y., sent to Mr. E. G. Blackford, of Ful- 
ton Market, a brown trout which weighed, on its re- 
ceipt, three pounds. It was taken in Allen's Creek, 
Monroe County, New York, a tributary of the Genesee 
River, which receives the famous Caledonia Creek, on 
which the hatchery of the New York Fish Commission 
at Mumford is placed. This fish must have been one 
which was hatched at the Caledonia station in March, 
1883, from eggs sent there by me. These eggs were 
the first which were received in America, and came to 
me as a personal present from my friend, Mr. von Behr, 
President of the Deutscher Fischerei-Verein, whose 
headquarters are in Berlin, and consequently the fish 
was about three years and three months old. 

"At the time that these eggs were sent from Germany 
Mr. von Behr advised me that there were two kinds of 
them, not species, nor even varieties, but merely from 
different waters. One kind, the larger eggs, were from 
trout inhabiting deep lakes, while the smaller kind were 
from the mountain streams. These kinds are probably 
analogous in respect of size to the fontinalis of the 
Rangeley Lakes of Maine and those of our other east- 
ern American waters, as near as I understand the case. 
I sent to the Caledonia station eggs of both kinds, and 
this fish, which was taken in Allen's Creek, is probably 
one that escaped from the hatchery, unless a plant had 
been made in the creek. 

'Tn the ponds under my charge at Cold Spring Har- 
bor, we reserved some of these first importations, but 
lost the greater portion of them from various causes. 
Of the few that were left there was one which was 












On '-" 

T-i 

H 
P 
O 

H 

o 

on 
pq 



1^2 Modern Fishcutture in Fresh and Salt WateY. 

somewhat larger than its fellows, and proved to be a 
male fish, and was named 'Herr von Behr,' in honor 
of my German friend. In October, 1886, when it was 
three and a half years old, we took it from the pond and 
placed it in an aquarium in the hatchery, which had a 
good flow of running water, in order to show it to the 
New York Fish Commissioners, who v/ere expected 
the next day. In the morning the fish was dead, and it 
now reposes in alcohol, where its size can be admired 
by visitors. Its weight was three and a half pounds 
plump, or at any rate of one pound a year.'' 

Mr. A. D. Frye, of Bellmore, Long Island, writes, 
under date of March 2y, 1887, ^s follows : 'Two years 
since I applied to you for some brown trout to stock a 
public stream, called Newbridge Creek, at this place, 
and you furnished them. I have by inquiry learned 
that last summer some of these fish were taken which 
weighed three-quarters of a pound." According to 
this, these fish could not have been more than one and 
a half years old ; and from my experience I think that 
the brown trout, as it is called in England, and which 
is the common brook trout of Europe (Salmo fario) is 
a quick-growing fish, which is destined to become a 
favorite in America when it is thoroughly known. I 
have taken this fish with a fly, and consider it one of 
the gamiest — in fact, the gamiest — trout that I ever 
haildled with a rod. 

I believe that the brown trout will be found to be a 
better fish, taking it all around, than our own native 
fontinalis. The reasons for this belief are : ( i ) It is 
of quicker growth; (2) it is gamier; (3) except in the 
breeding season, when the males of fontinalis are bril- 
liantly colored, it is fully as handsome; (4) from what 
I can learn I incline to think it will bear water several 



Other Troiits and the Salmons. 153 

degrees warmer than fontinalis, and therefore it is 
adapted to a wider range. 

In the winter of 1882-3 I introduced the brown trout, 
w9. fQrio, into America. The eggs were sent to me as 
a personal present by the late Baron von Behr, Presi- 
dent of the German Fishery Association. I had taken 
the fish in the Black Forest, Germany, and had told 
Herr von Behr that, if opportunity offered, I would 
introduce it in America. Some years later (January, 
1883) I was appointed to start a hatchery on Long 
Island, and he s«nt me something like 100,000 eggs, 
most of which were good. I had not time to prepare 
fOx- their hatching, and sent some of the eggs to Mr. 
Clark, Superintendent U. S. F..C., in Michigan, and 
some to Mr. Green, at Caledonia, N. Y., who, like my- 
self, was a State superintendent of a hatchery. Mr. 
Clark publicly acknowledged this present of eggs, but 
Mr. Green, who never could admit that there was more 
than one fishculturist on earth, gave it out that he im- 
ported the eggs and took the liberty of calling them 
"German" trout. He had a way of giving new names 
to fish, deriving them from some locality, such as 
"California mountain trout," "Oswego bass," etc., 
which have mostly died out. The unfortunate promi- 
nence which the newspapers gave him retarded fish- 
culture some years, through his antagonism to Prof. 
Baird and all other fishculturists. "Top rail or no 
fence" was the motto, and as he was a "pioneer," he 
had the backing of ignorant editors. He was a man of 
brains, but newspaper notoriety was his weak point. 

GROWTH OF BROWN TROUT. 

Some anglers have objected to the introduction of 



154 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

brown trout in our streams because they grow too fast 
and might eventually kill out our native fish. To this 
I say : "Let 'em do it if they can, and the 'fittest' will 
survive ;" but they can't do it. The chubs, dace, pike, 
bass and other fishes have worked this game for cen- 
turies before a white angler wet a line in an American 
trout stream, and here w^e are ! A trout is a cannibal 
when he gets to be three years old, whether he is a na- 
tive American or an adopted citizen, and it is only a 
question of which fish matures in the shortest time for 
the angler. 

A Rochester paper said : "A brown trout was taken 
in the spring brook below the Caledonia hatchery on 
June I, 1 89 1, by F. P. Brownell, which weighed eleven 
pounds, and as the first importation was made in 1883, 
by Colonel Fred Mather, it could not have been over 
eight years old, at most. Brownell would say nothing 
of the mode of capture, and offered to sell it for two 
dollars. Failing to sell it, he took it home, and was 
preparing to cook it when Mr. Annin dropped in and 
saw it. Commissioner W. H. Bowman has said that 
he would have given ten dollars for it to send to Wash- 
ington to have a plaster cast made of it, and other men 
would have been glad to purchase it for scientific pur- 
poses ; but it is fortunate that Mr. Annin saw, identi- 
fied and weighed the fish. Brown trout have been 
taken in England weighing as much as eighteen pounds, 
but this one is the largest on record in America at pres- 
ent writing." 

The so-called Loch-Leven trout of Scotland are the 
brown trout, which differ slightly in color in their na- 
tive waters, but show no differences when hatched in 
America. Sir James Ramsay Gibson Maitland, Bart., 
sent many eggs from his great fish breeding establish- 



Other Trouts and the Salmons. 155 

rrient at Howietown, near Stirling, Scotland, but when 
grown the fish could not be distinguished from brown 
trout. 

Dr. H. G. Preston, President of the Oxford Rod and 
Gun Club, whose preserves are at Eastport, Long 
Island, wrote me under date of March 29, 1891, as fol- 
lows : "Brown trout eleven and twelve inches long 
were caught last April and May, the growth from the 
fry you sent me the year before." This beats any 
growth that I know of. This club moved from Patch- 
ogue, some sixteen miles west, to Eastport in 1889, but 
had no fry from us until the next year ; therefore the 
age of the fish could not have been over thirteen to 
fourteen months — truly a marvelous growth. 

The following from ex-Commissioner, the late Gen. 
R. U. Sherman, is of interest as showing that brown 
trout have grown and bred in the Adirondack waters ; 
not as large as elsewhere, and this is not surprising, 
for those cold waters do not grow fish as quickly as 
more southern ones where the temperature ranges well 
into the sixties for over half the year : 

"New Hartford, N. Y., Nov. 13, 1890. — Dear Sir: 
We have been taking at Bisby lately, in our spawn 
gathering, quite a number of what I suppose to be 
Sal mo fario, and have already put on the trays 10,000 
eggs. Some of the fish are of two pounds weight, but 
the general run is from one-half to one pound. We 
planted in Bisby lake 5,000 of the S. fario fry, and 
these fish, I suppose, are from that plant. Three or 
four years ago we planted in a small spring pond flow- 
ing into Bisby 10,000 fry of Loch-Leven trout from 
eggs courteously furnished by you. The fry were very 
hardy and vigorous, but we never saw one of the fish 



156 Modern Fishctilture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

after the fry were put in the pond. It is possible the 
fish we are now taking are Loch-Leven, which have 
come down from the little pond to the lake. 

''Very truly, 

"R. U. Sherman." 

I have, in another place, said that the brown trout 
and the Loch-Leven trout are the same fish, and so, too, 
wrote Gen. Sherman. 



RAINBOW TROUT (Sahuo irideus) . 

This handsome fish, which is a native of the Pacific 
coast, in the mountain streams of California and north- 
ward, was introduced into the eastern waters by the 
LTnited States Fish Commission in 1880, but some 
years before that date the late Seth Green brought 
some adult fish to his ponds at Caledonia, N. Y., and 
bred from them. As usual, he gave them new names, 
for he claimed to have two species, calling them "Cali- 
fornia brook trout" and "California mountain trout;" 
but he knew nothing of ichthyology and could not de- 
scribe the differences, which, by the way, did not exist. 

This fish is a "true trout," as has been said. It has 
a very small mouth, for a trout ; is black-spotted, with 
a wide crimson band running along each side. It will 
bear slightly warmer waters than our "brook trout," 
and therefore may be of use in a more southern habitat. 
They are not as great fish-eaters as other trout, and 
this is another point in their favor. In deep waters, 
notably those of the Ozark region of Missouri, they 
have grown to a weight of ten pounds. 

"Rainbow trout will live in warmer water than brook 




2 



Co 



^ in 



H 
O 

H 

o 

pq 

iz: 



158 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

trout, and are found in swift, rapid streams at 85° 
Fahr., especially where there is some shade ; but in 
ponds that temperature is dangerous, even with shade 
and a good current. In its natural condition this trout 
is usually found in water varying from 38° Fahr. in 
winter to 70° Fahr. in summer, and in selecting a site 
for a trout hatchery spring water with a temperature 
of 42° to 58° is required. The rainbow trout is a su- 
perior game fish, a vigorous biter and fights bravely 
for liberty, though in the east it is somewhat inferior 
to the brook trout in these respects." The above was 
written by Mr. George A. Seagle, Superintendent U. S. 
F. C. Station, Wytheville, Va., for "A Manual of Fish- 
culture," published by the U. S. Fish Commission in 
its Report for 1897 — pages i to 340 — and afterward as 
a separate book. 

When the fish was first brought east all the fishcultur- 
ists disliked it, myself among them, because its eggs 
were not readily impregnated, and when one has to 
pick out 50 to 75 per cent, of eggs he finds it more 
work than he wants. It spawned in very early spring 
or late winter, as one chose to regard February and 
March, and many of the eggs were hard and "glassy ;" 
these declined to receive the milt, being already full. 
This condition we now know to be due to the eggs 
being over-ripe and absorbing water somehow before 
extrusion, as they will not readily spawn in confine- 
ment for some unknown reason. 



THE RAINBOW IN ENGLAND. 

Mr. R. B. Marston, editor of the London "Fishing 
Gazette," asked me the following questions ; 



Other Trouts and the Sahiions. 159 

1. Has the rainbow trout become established in any 
eastern coast rivers ; /. e., to breed freely in a wild state ? 

2. Has it been good friends with the other trout, or 
has it taken so much interest in them as to eat 'em up ? 

3. Does it rise well and freely to the fly? 

4. Does it stop in the rivers where planted ? 

5. Is it better than salmon to eat? 

To this I answered as far as my knowledge of the 
fish went, and in his issue of August 2y, 1898, he print- 
ed the following from my pen : 

"You evidently want a monograph on 6^. irideus, but 
I am not competent to write it, for I've never fished 
west of the Rockies, and do not know this fish in its 
native waters. A review of your questions shows that 
you only want to know about it in the east, and I'll try 
to answer. 

"i. Not that I know of. The rainbow has been bred 
in the State of New York for about twenty-four years. 
Most of my books are in storage, and I must not try to 
give exact dates, but it was about 1873 o^ 1874 that 
Seth Green took young shad to California and then 
introduced the rainbow trout in the east. He turned 
them out indiscriminately, and I stocked many streams 
with them as a superintendent under orders from the 
Board of Fish Commissioners of the State, but I do 
not know of a stream where they have become estab- 
lished, in the sense that you mean. Adults are caught 
here and there, but I do not know of a stream in which 
they have sustained themselves ; but their propagation 
goes on. They have been planted in the State of New 
York, from the cold mountainous lakes of the Adiron- 
dacks to the most southern streams of Long Island. I 
will refer to this question again, after the others are 
answered categorically. 



i6o Modern Fishcultnrc in Fresh and Salt Water. 

"2. I doubt if the rainbow is as destructive to small 
fish as either the brown trout (fario) or our own foji- 
tinalis. This doubt has two foundations. In confine- 
ment it has shown no disposition to eat smaller fish if 
other food was plenty, and its comparatively small 
mouth bars it from taking some fish that a fario or a 
fontinalis could easily stow away. 

''3. Yes ; it rises to the fly well. I stocked the upper 
of three millponds at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, 
with rainbows, and when fly fishing below the second 
dam two years later I took a number of rainbows. Mr. 
Livington Stone, for years in charge of the breeding 
station at Baird, Cal., where the fish is native, says 
they rise well to the fly. 

''4. This may be a matter of suitable water. My own 
experience has been mostly with confined fish. In its 
native rivers, of course, it has been true and faithful, 
but in our eastern rivers there are different conditions. 
The fish has remained in some Adirondack lakes and 
grown large ; but whether it has bred there and 'estab- 
lished itself I cannot say. This is 'the benefit of the 
doubt.' 

"5. This is a question of taste, de gustihits, etc. The 
rainbow is a good table fish ; but it is a trout, and I can't 
compare it to salmon any more than I can compare a 
saddle of Southdown mutton to a beefsteak. The rain- 
bow trout is hardly as good a table fish, me judice, as 
the brown trout, or our 'brook trout,' and any one of 
the three beats salmon as a steady diet in camp, for 
salmon is so rich that it soon cloys. This is merely an 
individual opinion, but it is what you asked for. 

"Having gone over the questions in their order, I feel 
inclined to say more. I have seen the articles in 'Land 
and Water' of March 26, by yourself, Mr. Charles S. 



Other Trouts and the Salmons. i6l 

Patterson, M. B., M. R. C. S., F. Z. S., and the notes 
by the Editor. As Sir Lucius O'Trigger says: *It's a 
very pretty fight as it stands/ 

"Mr. Patterson is correct in the main, but assumes 
that the 'steel-head salmon' {S. gairdneri) is a salmon, a 
natural mistake to make from its popular name. It is 
a big river trout, so very like the rainbow in structure 
and markings that at one time some ichthyologists 
thought them the same fish. 

"Since our favorite fontinalis has refused to stay in 
English streams, the fact that iridciis may not have 
established itself in waters of the State of New York 
is no proof that it may not be good in yours. Most 
Americans think that fontinalis, the char which we call 
'brook trout,' is the best trout in the world. It is, in its 
home. On Long Island and in Canada, where it can, 
it goes to salt water, and comes back plump and in ex- 
cellent order, but its red spots gone if it stays there long. 
Then in Canada it is called 'sea trout.' In the trout 
streams of the Hudson river it is barred from the sea 
by the warm water of the river in summer, and in win- 
ter it does not want to go down. 

''When I was engaged in fishculture all our fishcul- 
turists disliked the rainbow trout at first because its 
eggs did not impregnate well, and we had to pick out 
about 75 per cent, of unfertile eggs. This is not so 
now. Then the fish had been taken from waters which 
were colder in the spring, when the snows above the 
short streams west of the Rockies melted, and it was a 
spring spawner, for all Salmon idee spawn on a falling 
temperature. Gradually the rainbow changed its habit, 
and began to spav.m earlier, until now, after some 
twenty or more generations of breeding in the east, it 
spawns in the fall or early winter. If you get more 



162 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

rainbow eggs, get them from Eastern America, where 
the spawning habit has been changed from spring to 
early winter." 

My answers were not satisfactory to myself ; they 
hinted that I was not certain about question i, and I 
asked Mr. Marston to send me galley slips. These I 
sent out, and the answers show that I did not know it 
all. Here they are : 

Hon. Herschel Whitaker, of the Michigan Fish Com- 
mission, one of the most able and enthusiastic of fish- 
culturists, writes : 

"Regarding the questions which you wish me to 
make some suggestions about, will say, so far as query 
I is concerned : We have had considerable experience 
with this fish in our State, and a somewhat peculiar 
one. Several years ago we began stocking streams, 
and after a few years became utterly discouraged be- 
cause of their non-appearance, and became convinced 
there was no use continuing the work and quit it, liber- 
ating the stock fish we had in a water near by the hatch- 
ery. In the course of a few seasons we were astonished 
to find that in some of our better rivers the rainbow was 
showing up magnificently and spawning. The fish 
soon became so popular with sportsmen that we again 
secured a stock of fish, and have since been stocking 
waters to which they take kindly, which are our larger 
streams, that afiford deep pools, where they seem to 
remain most of the year, although in June and July 
many small rainbows are taken on the rifiles. It is now 
thoroughly established in several of our rivers, and is 
the fish all anglers are looking for. Its edible quali- 
ties, in my opinion, are not to be compared with the 
brook trout, but he is a fighter from way back. 

"So far as its being good friends with the brook trout 



Other Troiits and the Salmons. 163 

is concerned, I am inclined to think he is a very good 
friend of the smaller brook trout — in fact, takes him in 
whenever opportunity offers. I think big fish that are 
piscivorous prey on other fish at all times when pos- 
sible, and the rainbow is no exception in this regard. 
One of the most successful bait fishermen 1 know 
fishes much for the rainbow, and his most tempting 
and successful lure is the chub or shiner ; so there is no 
question as to the rainbow's proclivities in this regard. 
As to question 2, I should say he did rise most mag- 
nificently, especially from 5 o'clock on to 10 p. m., dur- 
ing July and August — and then you have trouble if he 
is a big one. 

"Answering query 4, will say that it does stop in suit- 
able streams, and is apparently content with its sur- 
roundings." 

Mr. Frank N. Clark, Superintendent of the U. S. 
F. C. stations in Michigan, writes from Northville : 

"In response to your letter under date of February 4, 
in reference to rainbow trout, and in answer to ques- 
tion No. I, I would say that the Au Sable and the Pere 
Marquette rivers of Michigan are well stocked with 
rainbow trout. One year ago last fall I had a camp 
on the Au Sable River for the purpose of getting a 
stock of brook trout eggs, and upward of 10,000 
spawners were secured ; and at each haul we would 
catch from 500 to 2,000 rainbow trout which were 
hatched out the spring before. In the Au Sable, then, 
the presence of rainbow trout in large numbers has evi- 
dently been established. The Pere Marquette River is 
practically the same, and there are other streams in 
Michigan where rainbow trout are quite plentiful. They 
seem to stay in the Michigan streams and do not go 
out into Lake Michigan. Large quantities, however, 



164 Modem Fishciiltiire in Fresh and Salt Water. 

are found away below the point where brook trout are, 
and during the spawning season, which begins about 
February i, they go up stream, and all the way between 
Wakeley's Point and Stephan's Point (which is a dis- 
tance of about seven or eight miles) they make beds for 
the purpose of spawning." 

Mr. W. de C. Ravenel, of the U. S. F. C, says : 
"In response to your letter with reference to rainbow 
trout in streams of the east, I regret that I cannot give 
you as definite information as I should like. I pre- 
sume that by the east you mean streams east of the 
Sierra Nevada — that is, streams in which the rainbow 
trout was not indigenous. Commencing with Wyo- 
ming, I would refer you to the reports of their State 
Commission, which show that rainbow trout are nu- 
merous in several streams, as a result of plants made by 
their State Commission and by the United States Com- 
mission. At one haul of the seine hundreds of fish 
from three to eight pounds in weight have been taken. 
In Colorado the rainbow trout is thoroughly established 
in various branches of the Platte River, also in Twin 
Lakes and a number of other lakes. In the Ozark re- 
gions of Missouri and Arkansas numbers of streams 
have been thoroughly stocked and the trout are doing 
well. In Iowa, Mr. R. S. Johnson, the superintendent 
of our station there, reports the collection of adult rain- 
bow trout in several streams. In Michigan, in the Au 
Sable River, trout weighing from five to seven pounds 
are frequently taken. The Au Sable many years ago 
was a grayling stream ; but rainbow, brook and grayling 
are now caught in the same localities. 

"In Eastern Tennessee, in the Jack River, rainbow 
trout are thoroughly established, and are reproducing; 
and in a number of rivers in North Carolina the same 



Other TvGuts and the Salmons. 165 

conditions exist. M. C. Toms, of Hendersonville, N. 
C, on February 6, 1896, wrote us with reference to the 
success attained in Green River from fish planted from 
the Wytheville, Virginia, station. Mr. J. D. Phipps, 
of Longs Gap, Grayson County, Virginia, reports Peach 
Bottom Creek as splendidly stocked, fish having been 
caught there measuring twenty-two inches in length. 
He speaks of them as tine game fish, and reports that 
the increase in numbers has been great. Mr. W. K. 
Hancock, writing from Colorado, makes the following 
statement: 'In the streams throughout this part of 
the country rainbow trout are not very plentiful, and 
their average size would be from three to five fish to the 
pound ; but occasionally one will be taken weighing 
from one-half to three-fourths of a pound. Their 
growth is very slow in our streams in this immediate 
vicinity (Leadville) ; in the lower part of the State, 
south and southwest of this, they are more plentiful 
and grow much larger. In Twin Lakes, twelve miles 
southwest of here, they grow to twelve and thirteen 
pound.-. They are very game and are considered fine 
table fish.' 

"A correspondent, Mr. T. W. Scott, of Rome, Geor- 
gia, under date of December 17, 1895, reported that 
numbers of rainbow trout were caught in Silver Creek. 
William W. Finney, of Belair, Maryland, in a letter 
dated April 26, 1895, refers to two streams flowing into 
the Susquehanna River that were stocked some years 
before. He states that several had been caught in the 
stream after all hope had been abandoned of their being 
found, and that besides the large fish numbers of small 
ones were observed, from four to five inches long. Mr. 
Atkins, last spring, in a tributary of Alamoosook Lake, 
near East Orland, Maine, captured 199 adult rainbow 



i66 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

trout which had ascended the stream for the purpose 
of spawning. These were the resuU of fry Hberated in 
this lake some years before. 

"In addition to the information given you, by ref- 
erence to the Commissioner's report for 1896, pages 
136 to 139, you will find some data on this subject, col- 
lated by Dr. Smith. I am also under the impression, 
without being able to give you the exact figures, that 
the rivers and streams in the State of Wisconsin have 
been very thoroughly stocked." 

Other letters of like tenor were received from Mr. 
John G. Roberts, Superintendent of the New York 
State hatchery at Saranac Inn, in the Adirondacks ; 
Mr. W. F. Page, Mr. W. E. Meehan, Assistant Secre- 
tary and Statistician of Pennsylvania Fish Commis- 
sion, and others ; but enough has been cited to show 
that the rainbow trout has come east to stay. 



LAKE TROUT (Salvelinus namaycush). 

This species is gray-spotted, the spots sometimes 
tinged with red. Its caudal fin is deeply forked. They 
require colder water than the brook trout, and in the 
summer they are only found in the deeper waters of 
those lakes which have a depth of forty or more feet, 
and have large springs at the bottom. The lake trout 
is not much of a favorite with anglers because it must 
be fished for in such deep water, and its fighting quali- 
ties are inferior to those of the brook trout. 

The "salmon" of the Adirondacks, which one hears 
of so much, is simply the lake trout, sometimes called 
salmon-trout, and often the first part of the name only 
is used. But they are not salmon nor salmon-trout. 










O 

H 




1 68 Modern Fishcidture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

A lake trout of 2yl pounds, from Raquette lake, is 
credited to Alvah Dunning, the guide, who sent it to 
the Superintendent of the Adirondack railroad. It was 
taken July 2, 1879. 

Most people agree on the excellent table qualities of 
the Adirondack lake trout. They are a fine fish, and I 
prefer them, when small, to the brook trout for the pan. 
In the spring, while the water is cool near the shore, 
these fish take the fly, but in summer they must be 
sought in deep water, for, like all deep water trouts, 
they are sensitive to warmth and die soon from it. The 
sabling, or German char, is probably as sensitive, and 
our deep waters would suit it very well. The fish 
would also suit the waters, as it is a lake trout of large 
size with a beautifully colored crimson side and belly, 
and a fine table fish. The native trout of the Adiron- 
dacks can be distinguished from those planted by the 
Commission from parents in Lake Ontario by their 
color. The skin is darker and the flesh redder, yet 
ichthyologically they are the same fish. One would 
think the strangers, having been placed here in baby- 
hood, would assume the characters of the natives. 

There is a variety called *'siscowet" in Lake Superior 
which is shorter and "inordinately fat," a very doubt- 
ful distinction. 

As the brook and lake trout often occupy the same 
spawning grounds at the same time, there would be 
danger of mixing the breeds but for the fact that brook 
trout spawn in day time and the lakers at night, and the 
milt of the male fish loses its power of impregnating 
eggs in less than five minutes after extrusion. 



Other Troiits and the Salmons. 169 



CHAPTER XV. 

HYBRID FISH. 

All the salmonidse readily hybridize. As an experi- 
ment in the study of animal life it was worth while to 
try this, but in ordinary fishculture it is a very bad 
practice, for no possible good comes from it in the cul- 
ture of trout. This was such a fad at the New York 
State hatchery at Caledonia that when the present State 
Fish, Game and Forest Commission took charge of the 
work they found but few pure bred trout of any kind 
in the ponds. For years bastard fish had been bred in- 
discriminately at that station and sent out into the 
streams. The new Commission wisely stopped this 
work and stocked up with pure bred fish. No such 
thing was found at Cold Spring Harbor when I left it, 
for I would not have a bastard fish ; I hate the name! 
even if softened to "hybrid." 

At Mr. Blackford's "trout openings" I have seen 
trout from Caledonia marked "One-sixteenth brook 
trout, nine-sixteenths lake trout and three-eighths sal- 
mon.'* Fishculturists who know how difficult it is to 
keep young trout from being mixed during the first 
year used to smile at the very specific amount of each 
kind of blood, which involved some bookkeeping for 
several years. 

SHAD AND ALEWIFE. 

I have hybridized the shad and the river herring, ale- 
wives, in great numbers, but there was a valid reason 



170 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

for it. At the last haul at night, on the Hudson, we 
often got a lot of spawning shad, but no males ; the net 
would have a lot of ripe alewives, and it was a question 
whether it was not better to fertilize the eggs than to 
throw them away. The bastards would be eatable, and 
so, on that ground, the hybridizing was done. The 
eggs hatched, but I never say an adult fish which I 
thought to be the result of this cross, and I worked the 
Hudson many years. 

The fishermen learned of this, and when they caught 
a mattowaca, as the Indians called it, the "tailor her- 
ring" (Clupea niediocris) , which was in the Hudson 
centuries before they were born, they named it ''Rebel 
shad," as they first noticed it shortly after the Civil 
War. 

SHAD AND STRIPED BASS. 

Green claimed to have crossed the shad with the 
striped bass, and the Hon. Robert B. Roosevelt, then 
(1879) President of the New York Fish Commission, 
wrote a long article on the subject for the New York 
"Tribune," dated October 3. 1879. To many persons 
a fish is merely a fish, and they would see nothing 
strange in crossing one kind on another ; but fishes 
differ in structure as mammals do, and the man who 
should claim that he had crossed the dog and the cat, 
the horse and the cow, or the sheep and the goat, would 
be laughed at. Animals must be nearly related to inter- 
breed, and when you cross the horse and the ass you 
get a m.ule, an infertile hybrid. The dog and the wolf 
may have issue, but the dog and the fox will not, al- 
though a case or two has been reported. 

The shad with its soft fins and serrated abdomen 



Other Trouts and the Salmons. 171 

differs from the striped bass with its spiny fin-rays and 
hard scales more than the dog differs from the fox or 
the cat, and as much as the horse differs from the cow. 
The water where Mr. Green was hatching shad mav 
have been filled with milt of shad ; his bass milt may 
have fallen on barren soil ; his eggs may have hatched, 
and as he turned the fry loose he may have honestly 
believed that the fish were the hybrids that he claimed 
them to be, but I do not believe it. 

Since writing this a correspondent of ''Forest and 
Stream" asked some questions which were referred to 
me. At the risk of repeating, I give his questions and 
the answers. 

"i. How far can hybrids be produced among fishes? 
2. To what degree are they fertile, either with one of 
the parent stocks or with each other? 3. Do hybrid 
fishes occur in a state of nature ?" 

Answer. — i. No man knows how far hybrids can be 
produced among fishes, because comparatively few 
fishes have been bred artificially, and of these the ex- 
periments in hybridizing have been mainly confined to 
the salmon family. We know that animals must be 
closely related to hybridize, and that few hybrids are 
fertile. The wild "Canada" goose will breed with our 
tame geese, but the progeny is infertile with either 
parent or among themselves. The same is true of the 
horse and the ass, which can produce the useful mule, 
without which our armies would be impotent, and who 
"without pride of ancestry, or hope of posterity," threw 
his weight into his collar and pulled the artillery out 
of the mud. Horses would have fretted to death at this 
time, but the mules chewed a splinter from the neck- 
yoke, received a lash that cut in deep, heard the ob- 
jurgations of the driver, and the battery went on. 



1^2 Modern Fishciilture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

Animals near together often refuse to breed or pro- 
duce infertile progeny, called "mules" — for the term is 
applied to ail infertile hybrids, such as crosses between 
the goldfinch and canary birds, and is not restricted to 
the hybrid animal which serves our armies as neither of 
its parents could do. The hybrid geese referred to are 
''mules ;" that term simply means an infertile hybrid. 

To question No. 2, I can only say that most of the 
salmon family appear to produce fertile hybrids, as far 
as the trouts and salmons are concerned, but no ex- 
periments have been made to my knowledge with the 
different whitefishes, smelts, etc., which "belong" to 
the family by reason of some such slight affinity, such 
as having the second dorsal fin composed of fat instead 
of rays. 

To the third question I will say that I never knew 
hybrid fishes to occur in nature. All animals prefer 
to mate with their own kind. Nature abhors a mule, 
and limits it to one life, with no progeny. I have 
known a wild mallard to mate with a black duck and 
raise a brood, but the birds were wounded and could 
not fly, and they had no choice. This was on the Pa- 
munky River, Virginia. Some men regard every ani- 
mal which they are not acquainted with as a hybrid. 
When the grayling was first brought to notice in Ameri- 
ca, a man wrote to a sportsman's paper giving it as his 
opinion that the grayling was a cross between a troii<- 
and a sucker, and that man was a fish commissioner of 
Illinois at the time. 



Other Trouts and the Salmons, 173 



CHAPTER XVI. 

BARREN TROUT AND ANNUAL SPAWNERS. 

Occasionally we find a female trout which has no 
eggs at the spawning time. Many of these I have 
opened ; some had the little cluster which promises a 
crop next year, but three had no sign of ever bearing 
eggs. The fish had not spawned or the flabby sides 
and swollen vent would have been present, and there 
was no indication of these conditions. I paid little 
attention to this matter until I received a letter from 
Charles A. Hoxsie, Carolina, R. I., where trout are 
raised for market. Under date of Jan. 21, 1889, M^- 
Hoxsie wrote a letter, from which I quote : 

"In the fall of 1887 I took some trout from my 
natural pond, where they had been about a year, with 
plenty of natural food. This pond has four acres in it. 
On Oct. I they were put into a spawning pond, and 
when the time came for them to go on the spawning 
races I got spawn for a few days when not a trout 
would go on the beds. Upon examination there were 
no eggs in them, and I thought they must have deposit- 
ed their spawn. I kept these fish until last fall, when I 
again put them in the spawning pond, and the same 
thing happened. 

"A careful examination showed that nine out of everv 
ten were barren, no eggs in them, nor had there been 
any. and I concluded that they were barren the year 
before. This is a new thing to me. and I would like 
your opinion. Have you ever heard of such a thing?" 

My answer was that I had seen barren trout and had 



174 Modern Fishcidtiire in Fresh and Salt Water. 

some, but they were not fish that had been moved at 
spawning time nor were a large proportion in any one 
pond barren — just a few individuals here and there. 
(See chapter on "Feeding Adult Trout.") 

When I sent out my circular to trout breeders to get 
their ideas question No. 8 was : "In your experience do 
you find that a female trout spawns every year?" The 
answers were varied. Here are some : 

''Usually I have found a few exceptional cases of 
barren females." — Livingston Stone. 

"Yes, with very rare exceptions." — W. L. Gilbert. 

"Can't say."— W. F. Page. 

'T think they do until nine years old." — E. F. Boehm. 

"I do."— Monroe A. Green. 

"No, the brook trout especially." — E. M. Robinson. 

"Some certainly do, as we find in the Adirondacks. 
Two large deformed brook trout come to the same bed 
and spawn every year." — J. G. Roberts. 

"When healthy and sufficiently fed, not overfed nor 
underfed, I think they do. Insufticient food will retard 
the development of the eggs. I am certain that over- 
feeding as the breeding season approaches also has a 
bad effect." — R. O. Sweeny, Duluth, Minn. 

The evidence in the case show^s that some trout may 
be permanently barren, while others may skip a year 
now and then or be biennial spawners, as some claim the 
salmon to be. It would be interesting to clip off the 
little adipose dorsal fins from all barren trout and see if 
they spawn the next year or if they are permanently 
barren. 



SECTION III 



OTHER SALMONID/E. 

The salmon family includes other fishes than the 
salmons, chars and trouts. This is not the place to go 
into the common characters of the different genera and 
species, but we may say that a few of these characters 
are an adipose second dorsal fin, stomach siphonal, with 
15 to 200 pyloric appendages ; no oviduct. The genera 
are: Coregonns, the white fishes, seven species, and 
Thymallus, the graylings, perhaps three species. Once 
the smelt was included, but is not now. 



CHAPTER XVIL 



GRAYLING. 



Thymallus. — Some time about 1870 Prof. E. D. Cope, 
of Philadelphia, discovered a few grayling among a lot 
of fish sent from Michigan, and it made a flutter among 
anglers, those from England being skeptical about the 
fish being found in America. He named it T. tricolor. 
I was then breeding trout in Monroe County, N. Y. In 

175 



176 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

1874 Mr. Daniel H. Fitzhugh, Jr., urged me to go and 
get their eggs. The fish inhabited streams in the lower 
peninsula of Michigan which ran east or west, but no 
others. The books said the fish spawned in March, and 
so Mr. Fitzhugh and I went on the Sable River on the 
28th of that month and caught a number, but they were 
not ripe. 1 brought some live fish back to Honeoye 
Falls, because I could not wait for the spawning season, 
and left on April 2. Then Seth Green tried it and got 
to the river on April 30, and found that the fish were 
through spawning. He dug about 100 eggs out of the 
gravel and took them to Caledonia, N. Y., where his 
partner, Mr. A. S. Collins, hatched a few, but did not 
rear them. 

Then there was a rush of anglers to the stream, for I 
had three columns on grayling fishing in "Forest and 
Stream" of April 23, 1874, and Norris, Hallock, Milner, 
Dawson, Bowles and others went for the grayling. The 
next year Mr. Fitzhugh and I were on the river from 
April 5 to 15, and struck it right. (See "Forest and 
Stream," May 13, 1875, from which I take the follow- 
ing) : "Of the 118 fish taken four were fully ripe and 
their eggs flowed freely ; six more yielded a portion. A 
fair proportion of milt was obtained and the eggs were 
packed in cups and boxes. A few were given to N. W. 
Clark 81 Son by Mr. Fitzhugh, and 8,000 were taken to 
Honeoye Falls. Had it been possible to have stayed a 
week longer we could have easily got ten times the 
number ; but as my leave of absence (from Prof. Baird) 
had expired we left Camp Bowles on the nth and went 
up the river to spend one day fishing for yearlings." 

The eggs hatched in about twelve days after incuba- 
tion. They were small and light in color, measuring 8 to 
the inch. The fi§h were small, with a very small sac. 







S^ 



O 



178 Modern Fishciilture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

They swam at five days old and took food the next day. 
I raised about 600 yeariings, which were 4 to 4^ inches 
long the next spring. My trout farm was not a success, 
and in the spring of 1876 the property was rented to a 
farmer, the large trout were sold and I opened the 
screens and let all yearlings go into the trout stream 
below. This stream had 100 chubs to one trout in it, 
and if any grayling lived to breed in it their progeny 
stood a poor chance. 

The adult fish brought down in 1874 lived but never 
spawned ; they seemed to have been made barren by re- 
moval from Michigan within a few days of the spawn- 
ing season. 

Mr. Frank N. Clark made some trials with grayling 
and so did the Michigan Fish Commission. Under 
date of Feb. 2^,, 1899, Mr. Clark writes: 'Tn response 
to your letter, under date of Feb. 18, in reference to the 
grayling matter, allow me to say that I can only refer 
you to my report to Prof. Baird. You will find it in the 
annual printed report of 1884. I have had specimens 
of grayling in the ponds here from time to time, and my 
experience has been that they acclimated themselves to 
their surroundings in every respect, with the exception 
of the fact that their eggs never developed properly. In 
many cases there was ovarian disease, and the ova ap- 
parently sloughed away. 

The only way to get good eggs is to procure the wild 
fish just a few days before they are ripe ; then hold them 
in penning crates, and when they are ready to spawn 
handle them the same as whitefish. They cannot be 
successfully manipulated if held for any great length of 
time." 

The Au Sable is now a trout stream, but it is said that 
a few of this beautiful, graceful fish are still there. Of 



Other SaUnonidcB. 1 79 

all the fishes I ever caught it was my favorite. Tender 

mouthed, it needed delicate handling, and But 

perhaps the memories of camping with *'Dan" Fitzhugh 
and his guide. Lew Jewell, have something to do with 
this. A small grayling has not the "magnificent dorsal" 
which caused Richardson, the naturalist of the Frank- 
lin expedition, to name the Arctic species T. signifefy 
the standard bearer ; but it has a square fin at first. 
When the fish is 10 inches long the last rays of the fin 
prolong and are colored to vie with the tail of a peacock. 

There is a grayling in Montana which Prof. Milner, 
Rep. U. S. F. C, 1872-73, named T. Montanus. Dr. 
James A. Henshall, Superintendent United States Fish- 
culture Station at Bozeman, Mont., has been breeding 
this Montana fish. In a paper read by him before the 
American Fisheries Society, 1898, among other things, 
he said : 

"Mr. Sprague took some 3,000,000 grayling eggs, 
1,000,000 of which were hatched and planted in Elk 
Creek ; 50,000 eyed eggs were shipped to the J^Ianches- 
ter (la.) station; 50,000 to the Leadville (Col.) station, 
and 10,000 to the United States Fish Commission ex- 
hibit at the Omaha Exposition, all of which, by extra 
precautions in packing, arrived at their destination in 
good condition. About 1,500,000 were shipped to the 
Bozeman station, but many were lost owing to a lack of 
ice for packing the eyed eggs. Some green eggs were 
shipped as an experiment, and though seemingly in 
good condition on arrival at Bozeman, they all died soon 
afterward. . . . About 500,000 eggs were hatched 
at the Bozeman station, and at least 50 per cent, of the 
fry are alive, and most of them are feeding. ... In 
stripping the female grayling the eggs are a little harder 
to start, but are then extruded more freely than in the 



l8o Modern Fishculturc in Fresh and Salt Water. 

case of the trout. About 3,000 eggs is the average for 
a fish of 12 inches in length. The eggs are white and 
as clear as a crystal. They are smaller than the native 
trout {S. my kiss) eggs, but after impregnation and the 
absorption of water will average 1-7 inch in diameter, 
while the native trout eggs are 1-6 inch, and the brook 
trout (S. fontinalis) eggs are 1-5 inch in diameter. 

"Soon after fertilization the eggs become glutinous 
and adhesive, forming bunches or masses of various 
sizes, when fungus rapidly develops and kills the ^gg. 
This renders the work of picking laborious, but impera- 
tive." 

The eggs of the Michigan grayling, now called T. 
ontariensis, had no adhesive quality, and this, to me, is 
evidence that there is difference enough to warrant the 
Montana grayling being classed as a different species. 

In England trout and grayling have lived in the same 
streams for centuries, but the trout, it must be remem- 
bered, is S. fario and not S. fontinalis. Grayling also 
inhabit the same streams in Montana with the Dolly- 
varden trout, both being indigenous. 

The Michigan Commission made persistent attempts 
to propagate this fish in 1886, 1887 and 1888 with no 
success, although they kept the fish under as favorable 
conditions as possible, but got no eggs from them. 

So much for fact. Now for a bit of theory. In ex- 
amining wild grayling I was at once struck by the sin- 
gular stomach, which was so muscular as to remind one 
of the gizzard of a fowl or that of the "gillaroo trout" of 
Ireland. This latter fish is merely a brown trout which 
has thickened its stomach by feeding on caddis worms 
with stony cases (see chapter on "Insect Food"), and 
the grayling has a stomach full of gravel and sand from 
this cause. It is possible that a few might breed if in 



Other Salmonidct. l8i 

a pond where this food was as plenty as in their native 
streams. It is worth trying. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



THE WHITEFISHES. 



Here is a genus of the family Salmonidce called Core- 
goniis, of which the well-known toothsome fish of the 
Great Lakes called "whitefish" is the head of the family. 
It is C. clupeiformis, a name which denotes its shad- 
like shape. It does not take the hook readily, althougii 
such "accidents" have happened. The smaller core- 
goni are known as ciscoes, lake herring, etc. Having 
hatched but few of these fish from eggs taken by others, 
I thought best to ask the Hon. Herschel Whitaker, of 
the Michigan Fish Commission, to give me something 
on this subject for the book, so that the reader would 
get it from a better authority. 

Mr. Whitaker (Feb. 5, 1898) writes as follows: 

My Dear Mather — I inclose herein a chapter on 
the whitefish spawning as conducted on the Great 
Lakes, which I hope may be satisfactory. I hope you 
will find it of some value to you. It is somewhat longer 
than you suggested, but I found it impossible to keep it 
within the narrow limits suggested, although it will not 
overrun it much. 



1^2 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 
CHAPTER XIX. 

THE WHITEFISH AND ITS CULTURE. 

By Herschel Whitaker. 

The whitefish is one of the most valuable commercial 
fishes found in the fresh waters of this country. It is 
highly esteemed for its fine flavor and always commands 
a high price in the market. Like the other members of 
the Sahnonidcc, it responds kindly to methods of artifi- 
cial propagation, and its culture is uniformly attended 
with the best results. 

Its spawning season varies somewhat, but the month 
of November may be said to cover the principal part of 
its spawning period. Beginning with the month of Oc- 
tober the fish gather on the gravelly and stony reefs and 
shoals of the lakes, both in and off shore, and hover on 
about these places until the spawning season has closed, 
when they retire to the deeper waters. 

The females are quite prolific, the larger ones casting 
anywhere from 30,000 to 70,000 eggs in a season, the 
average in a catch of from 10,000 to 15,000 being from 
25,000 to 35,000 to the female. 

Two methods are followed in taking the eggs for 
artificial propagation. The method most generally pur- 
sued, because of the natural conditions surrounding the 
fisheries, is to take the eggs from the fish as they are 
taken from the gill and pound nets when they are lifted. 
This method is somewhat uncertain as to result, and 
usually the eggs taken in this manner give a lower per- 
centage of fertilization than those handled by the 




.^<'^/%^. 



t84 Modern Pishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

method stated later on. If it is possible to take large 
numbers of parent fish at the precise time when the eggs 
are fully matured and ready to be cast, with an adequate 
force of strippers, a good percentage of impregnation 
may be secured. The season when this fully ripened 
condition is reached is comparatively short, and the un- 
certainties surrounding the work are so many that re- 
sults are always problematical. The fish linger about 
the spawning grounds for some time, but the period 
covered by the actual act of spawning is brief. To se- 
cure the highest percentage of fertilization the eggs 
must be thoroughly ripened and the impregnation must 
take place under the most favorable conditions. Those 
taken before this ripened time arrives give poor results 
and a low percentage of impregnation, the percentage 
depending upon the closeness to the condition above 
mentioned. 

In making this method of collection a crew of strip- 
pers and helpers sufficiently large to handle the greatest 
number of fish in the shortest possible time is put on the 
fishing tugs or boats, equipped with all the necessary ap- 
pliances for the work. The boats go out to the fishing 
grounds and begin lifting the nets. While they are 
being taken in the gravid females are relieved of their 
eggs and they are artificially fertilized. The same 
method is followed in the impregnation of the eggs of 
the whitefish as in the fertilization of trout eggs. These 
operations are usually conducted under many difficul- 
ties. The locality is the open lake with the rough seas, 
which are common in the autumn ; the temperature is 
usually about the freezing point. The decks of the 
boat, more or less covered wath ice, are crowded with 
the fishing crew and the strippers and encumbered with 
the usual paraphernalia of the boat and the utensils of 



Other Salmonidce. 185 

the spawn gatherers. Work under such circumstances 
is of necessity hurriedly done, and as the fish die shortly 
after being taken, the spawn gatherer must make haste 
in his work. 

There is another method giving surer and better re- 
sults, although the physical conditions are such on the 
larger areas of water that it can be carried on in but few 
places with any degree of success. By this method the 
fish are impounded when taken and are held alive in 
confinement until the eggs are ripened, when the fish 
can be stripped, with excellent results. The require- 
ments for such operations are a locality where fish can 
be taken in large numbers, and a sheltered location 
where the pounds in which the fish are held may be pro- 
tected from the autumn gales and seas. Operations of 
this character have been carried on for several years on 
the Detroit River, and are substantially as follows : 

Beginning with about the third week in October, the 
whitefish in the upper end of Lake Erie begin a general 
movement out of the head of the lake up the river, seek- 
ing the spawning beds in that stream and in the lower 
end of Lake St. Claire. Preparatory to this run the 
fishing grounds, which are operated with seines, are put 
in readiness for the coming of the fish. At each fishery 
a number of crates, about 6x12 feet in size, made of 
24-inch strips an inch thick, are nailed to 4x4 scantling 
uprights, one at each corner and one in the middle on 
each side, the floor of the crates being constructed in the 
same manner. These boards are fastened to the up- 
rights so as to leave spaces between the boards of from 
one to one and a half inches, to permit ?. free circulation 
of water through the crates and still prevent the escape 
of the fish. Inside each crate is constructed a false bot- 
tom that may be raised and lowered at will to any de- 



1 86 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water, 

sired height, giving complete control of the fish in the 
crates and facilitating handling when they are removed 
for stripping. These crates are placed in the margin of 
the river near the fishery, in a depth of water at the ordi- 
nary stage of from four to ten feet, and firmly anchored 
in position to stakes. They may be placed in single or 
double rows, abutting each other end to end. The 
crates are placed convenient to the apron over which the 
seine is drawn in fishing. Behind and beneath this 
apron is excavated a trench about 8 by lo feet in size, 
with a depth of water of about two feet, with palings so 
placed on the riverside as to allow a free passage of 
water into the trench. The fish are discharged from 
the net directly into the trench without being handled. 
From this pound or trench the fish pass through an 
artificial channel or small canal to the first crate and 
are subsequently removed to the other crates with scap 
nets as desired. 

From the middle or latter part of October the fish 
taken pass over the apron as fast as caught and then 
into the crates, where they are held alive in good condi- 
tion until fully ripened, when the spawning operations 
begin. The fishing is continued uninterruptedly from 
the beginning of the run until the close of the season, 
hauls being made every hour, day and night, with 
double crews of fishermen. 

Experience has shown that the mingling of the males 
with the females in the crates is desirable, the contact of 
the sexes tending to induce freer and earlier spawning 
than when separated. About November ist the females 
show evidences of spawning, and the stripping begins. 
The stripper takes his position on the platform between 
the crates, with a pan into which the eggs are to be 
stripped. He is seated on a low stool, with ordinary 



Other Sahnonidce. 187 

washtubs on each side, in some of which are placed a 
number of female fish, in others the ripe males ; other 
tubs being used for fish of both sexes not yet ready for 
spawning, which are culled out by the spawn taker as 
he proceeds. Two or more assistants, equipped with 
long-handler scapnets, then begin to take the ripe fish 
from the crates, and the stripper begins operations. 
With a large number of fish two or more strippers are 
working at the same time ; the entire time of one assist- 
ant is occupied in looking after the eggs when stripped. 
The eggs of several females and the milt from several 
males are stripped into the pan until a sufficient number 
of eggs are taken, when it is set aside, the eggs are 
washed up, and an attendant adds water from time to 
time as required and as the space between the envelop- 
ing membranes fills with water. The eggs are then 
allowed to stand until removed to the hatchery, which 
is done once a day, the eggs being placed in ordinary 
milk cans containing from twenty to forty quarts, ac- 
cording to the distance they are carried. On arriving 
at the hatchery the eggs are carefully measured, be- 
tween three and four quarts of green eggs being put in 
each jar, where they are kept automatically in motion by 
the water which passes through the jar until hatched. 
After the percentage of poor eggs has worked off eggs 
are added to the jars, each jar finally carrying four 
quarts. 

The hatching period covers from 120 to 170 days, 
varying according to the temperature of the water and 
the air during the hatching season. During the first 
three or four weeks the percentage of unfertilized eggs, 
being of lighter specific gravity, rise to the top of the jar 
and are taken off with a rubber tube, about a quarter 
of an inch inside diameter, used as a siphon. The jars 



1 88 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

are freed of the poor eggs in this way better than in 
any other manner. In drawing off the poor eggs in this 
way a small number of fertilized eggs are unavoidably 
taken oi¥ with the poor ones, but the mass thus removed 
is placed in what is known as "hospital jars," where 
eventually they are separated from the poor ones and 
saved. With the Chase automatic jar a force of three 
men will care for 200,000,000 whitefish eggs after the 
percentage of poor eggs are worked off, until the hatch- 
ing season comes on, one of the men acting as night 
watch. The only care required during this period is 
to see that the circulation of the water is maintained 
constantly in the jars. The average temperature of 
the water during the month of November, when the 
eggs are mainly taken, as shown by carefully kept rec- 
ords, is about 38 degrees, the minimum being 32, and 
the maximum about 46. The mean temperature of the 
air during the same time being about 36, with a mini- 
mum of 21 and a maximum of about 51. 

During the stripping the spawners are sheltered by a 
rough board house ; but this is only used during the 
severe weather, and is designed rather for the comfort 
of the men than for protection to the eggs, which rarely, 
if ever, become chilled by exposure to the air. The 
eggs are sometimes, on occasional days when the sun is 
too warm and bright, carried into this shelter for protec- 
tion from the light and heat. 

The hatching time arrives, the shell (^ the ^gg has 
become thin and weak, and on some warm spring day, 
the young fish having completed his development in 
the tgg, feeling the irksomeness of his confined quar- 
ters and the thrill of a warmer temperature, gives his 
tail a flirt, and with one supreme struggle he bursts the 
bands of his environment and comes forth a young and 



Other Sahnoiiidce. 189 

active fish, ready to start out on a new career in a larger 
field of activity. He begins life well equipped with a 
■stock of provisions stored up in a knapsack which he 
i;jrries upon his belly. This sac contains a portion of 
the food on which he lives for the next fortnight or 
more of his life, but being small as compared with the 
bulk of his body, it is no impediment to active and 
vigorous movement. He belongs to what is termed the 
"buoyant" fishes, swimming freely at all times from 
his birth, in this respect differing from the trout with 
its enormous sac, which encumbers its movements so 
that it lies for days prone upon its side almost helpless. 
This marked dift'erence between the whitefish and trout 
makes it possible to hatch whitefish by the hundred 
millions, while the hatching of trout is limited to a few 
millions, and at a greatly increased cost. The white- 
fish can be hatched in automatic jars, because when the 
young fish hatches he comes to the top of the jar and 
goes over with the outflow of water, while the trout, 
weighted down with his heavy sac, falls to the bottom 
of the jar. The specific gravity of trout eggs is greater 
than that of the whitefish, and the force of water re- 
quired to keep them in motion wears the sac of the 
trout and results in premature hatching. 

Observations made on whitefish fry at the Detroit 
hatchery for two or three years has settled beyond 
question the^fact that the young fish begins to take 
food, by the mll>tith, sometimes as early as the third day 
after hatching, and within four or five days quite free- 
ly. Since this fact has been fully established the cus- 
tom has been to put out the young fish within a few 
days after hatching. They are shipped in carload lots 
of three to four millions to the various lake ports 
reached by rail, where they are put upon tugs and con- 



190 Modern Fishciilturc in Fresh and Salt Water. 

veyed to the natural spawning beds, and there care- 
fully liberated, where natural food is abundant. 

The method of impounding whitefish above referred 
to possesses marked advantages over the other method, 
because the fish can thus be held alive and in good con- 
dition until their eggs have all been taken. They are 
continuously held under observation, and when fully 
ripened can be handled with the best results. There 
have been seasons when the taking of eggs of whitefish 
directly from the nets on the open lakes has yielded 
very unsatisfactory results, while for the same reason 
the impounding method has given most satisfactory 
results. It has been pursued continuously for years by 
the Michigan and Canadian Fish Commissions, with 
such excellent results that it may be said that it is sure 
to yield uniformly a large quantity of eggs, sometimes 
more than the capacity of the hatcheries will accom- 
modate. 

In distributing the young fish it has been found best 
to establish at convenient places on the lakes what are 
called "Relief Stations. '^ These stations are operated 
for only about two months in the last part of the hatch- 
ing season, the eggs being removed to these stations at 
as late a date as possible consistent with safety. For 
the first part of the season the eggs are all carried at 
the home station, this method resulting in economy, and 
the subsequent removal to the relief stations makes the 
distribution easier, and avoids the overcrowding of 
young fish at the hatching time, and consequent loss. 



As one of this family, the Adirondack frost fish, has 
adhesive eggs, its treatment will be found in Section V, 



SECTION IV. 



OTHER FRESH-WATER FISHES WITH 
FREE EGGS. 

We place fish eggs in two classes — the free or non- 
adhesive eggs and those which are glutinous and either 
adhere to sticks, stones, or bunch up, and those held in 
a mass. The free eggs give little trouble, and only one 
fresh-water fish that I know of lays its eggs in a mass, 
or string, and these are no trouble at all. 



CHAPTER XX. 

PIKE, PICKEREL AND MASCALONGE (Esox). 

While I believe that the country would be better off 
if all the pike tribe were exterminated, there are those 
who not only do not agree to this, but actually breed 
them, therefore they are given place here. They are 
ravenous fishes— ''fresh-water sharks" they have been 
called— whose food is wholly fish, and they feed all win- 
ter. I estimate that a lo-pound pike (Esox liicius) has 
been at least four years growing, and in that time has 
consumed fish as follows : First year, to grow i pound, 
40 pounds; second year, at 3J pounds, 140 pounds; 

191 



192 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

third year, at 6J pounds, 260 pounds, and in the fourth 
year, at 10 pounds, 400 pounds of fish — making nearly 
half a ton of fish to grow his beastly carcass, worth one 
dollar in the market. Their digestion has been com- 
pared to the action of fire, and 3 pounds of fish per day 
for a 1 0-pound pike would be a light luncheon. The 
States of New York and Wisconsin breed' the masca- 
longe, but why not the pike and the pickerel {Esox re- 
ticulatns) as well? 

I don't know that pickerel have been bred. In 1875 
Mort. Locke and I took some spawning pike, and he 
suggested that I hatch some. I impregnated about 2,000 
eggs, put them in damp moss and took them to my 
hatchery. They were too light to remain in the troughs, 
and I made a box like Green's shad box and put them 
in a stream below. They hatched in seven days, some 
500 of them, and I then threw them up on land. 

When the State of New York began hatching mas- 
calonge at Chautauqua lake the men had an idea that 
the eggs must be at the bottom of the lake, and made 
boxes with double wire top and bottom, to prevent small 
fish from nibbling any heads or tails that might work 
through, but now they use hatching jars. 



CHAPTER XXL 

SHAD {Chipea sapidissima) . 

This is the finest of the herring family for the table, 
but the most important, by reason of its numbers, is 



194 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

the sea herring (Cliipea harengus). Shad are a salt- 
water fish, and begin to ascend the rivers of Florida in 
January, those of North CaroUna in February. In the 
Hudson the fishermen expect the first fish about the 
middle of March, and so on up the coast to its northern 
range, which Jordan gives as the Miramachi River. It 
only visits the rivers to spawn, and is in its finest con- 
dition when fresh-run from the sea. 

When there are heavy snows to the north, which 
hang on late and then let down a lot of snow water, the 
shad will remain in the sea off the mouths of the rivers 
until the temperature suits them, when they will rush 
up, and the season is short and the catch light. The 
fact that shad spend the greater portion of their lives 
in the ocean, coming into the rivers merely to spawn, 
is generally known, but it has long been a mystery as 
to just what part of the ocean they located in after leav- 
ing the rivers. 

Twenty-five or thirty years ago the theory was that 
the shad went to the tropical regions after leaving fresh 
water, and that they were returning from those regions 
when they appeared off the coast of Florida in Febru- 
ary and gave off from the migration a certain number 
of fish for each of the main rivers as they passed north, 
reaching the Hudson in March. Investigations prose- 
cuted by the United States Fish Commission have 
shown that the shad don't go far from the mouths of 
the rivers which they had previously entered for pur- 
poses of spawning. The investigators of the commis- 
sion have caught shad, in a net specially constructed 
for the purpose, at points in the ocean some 200 miles 
or so from the mouths of rivers. These fish are ever 
on the hunt for a temperature of about 60 degrees, and 
they go farther to find a depth where that degree pre- 



Other Fresh-lVater Fishes With Free Eggs. 195 

vails. This causes the spawning season to vary, because 
the shad will not enter the rivers while there is much 
snow water in them. 

Because shad eggs hatch in four or five days the 
hatching is done at, or near, the fisheries. Shad spawn 
at night, usually before midnight. They seek eddies 
where their very light eggs may be kept from sinking 
by slight currents. They spawn at the surface of the 
water, a pair coming up and placing themselves on their 
sides, making a great fluttering as they discharge eggs 
and milt at the same time. The eggs are not adhesive. 

At South Hadley Falls, on the Connecticut, we re- 
mained on shore, and had the fishermen bring us the 
fish, because the water was deep and the fish close at 
hand. On the Hudson the spawn taker, in a suit of oil- 
skins, sat in a boat at the bag of the net, and after wet- 
ting a pan to free it from dust, would put the head of 
the fish under his left arm, holding its tail in the left 
hand, and strip toward the vent with his right, taking 
great care to leave plenty of space between the sharp 
saw-belly and his hand. Even with the care which expe- 
rience teaches, I have had the skin between thumb and 
forefinger cut many times. 

The pans would be taken on shore, where an expert 
would leave them in the milt and water, occasionally 
adding a little water and moving his hand gently 
through the mass until he announced that they had 
"come up," i. e. had absorbed all the water, and conse- 
quently milt, that they would take, and were ready to 
be put in the hatchers. This he determined by feeling — 
the eggs at first being flabby and not to be felt, but when 
full feel hard as they lightly strike the hand. 

In the early day we used Green's floating box. This 
was a box with no cover and a bottom of fine wire-cloth 



196 Modern Pislicitltiire in Fresh and Salt Water. 

(about No. 14), all well coal-tarred. Pieces of scant- 
ling were nailed to the sides of the box as floats, but 
put at such an angle that a box two feet long had one 
end four inches out of water and the other seven inches. 
When fast at one end the bottom presented an incline 
to the current which kept the eggs gently moving, and 
the box, or gang of boxes, would swing with the tide. 
There was tide-water w^here we hatched, ten miles be- 
low Albany, N. Y., but always fresh. The tide was 




Green's Floating Box. 

feeble, and had long periods of slack at high and low, 
when the men would have to gently shake the boxes to 
give circulation of water. 

Green's box was good in its day, and in lieu of better 
apparatus may be used now. The McDonald jar is used 
by all the State and Government shad stations now, 
even though they pump the water for the purpose. 
With Green's box w^e could not remove dead eggs until 
after they had "fungused up," and this is how we did 
it : A light wire frame, three inches square, covered 
with millinet, or mosquito netting — the former for 
choice — would be put on a handle and worked through 



Other Fresh-Water Fishes With Free Eggs. 197 

the eggs, those with fungus adhering to the net, whicli 
was washed overboard and tried again. This kept a 
man at it all the time, and the fungus did the same ; the 
cleaning was imperfect, but was the best we could de- 
vise. In the jars the dead eggs collect on top of the 
moving mass, the outlet tube is lowered on them, and 
out they go before a bit of fungus has formed, and one 
man can do the work of ten as we first did it. 

Shad eggs are very delicate and will not bear much 
handling. They are sometimes floated on flannel trays 
to take to a station, but they must be handled more 
carefully than trout eggs need be. 

The young shad swims from the time it leaves the 
shell, and is kept two or three days before turning out, 
until its sac is absorbed and it can take food. When 
liberated it strikes for the middle of the river, contrary 
to the habit of most young fishes, and escapes destruc- 
tion there by its inconspicuousness. It is a mere shred 
of albumen. I have had men look into a lo-gallon can, 
where there were 30,000 shad fry, and declare that they 
could see nothing. After pointing out the little squirm- 
ing things the usual question was : "Do you think they 
will ever amount to anything?" As if every shad was 
not once a mere "shred of albumen." 

If it had not been for the artificial propagation of 
shad the supply would have long since been exhausted. 
The increase of railroad facilities has widened the area 
of consumption. Fifty years ago the distribution of 
shad scarcely reached Buffalo ; now it includes a city 
as far West as Omaha. The rivers are more prolific of 
shad than ever, if we except the Connecticut, where 
their propagation was suspended for a number of years, 
and it is all due to the fishculturist. 

There were no shad on our Pacific coast ; they were 



198 Modern Fishcultiire in Fresh and Salt Water. 

planted there by the United States Fish Commission, 
year after year, and now they are not only plenty where 
they were planted, in the Sacramento River, but have 
strayed up the coast and stocked rivers of their own 
volition, as far up as Puget Sound. Not only that, but 
shad have increased in size. Mr. Blackford reports see- 
ing shad in San Francisco markets which weighed 16 
pounds. A few years ago a 6-pound shad in New York 
markets was considered large, and an 8-pounder a 
"monster." I have seen several Hudson River shad 
weighing 10 pounds during the past few years, and this 
was not an uncommon weight a century ago. 



SHAD FRY ACROSS THE ATLANTIC. 

Germany wanted shad fry, and as adult shad cartnot 
be handled without killing them, Prof. Baird detailed 
me to take them over, with Mr. Aaron Anderson as an 
assistant. We took 100,000 newly hatched fry from 
Holyoke, Mass., on August 4, 1874, and sailed on the 
North German Lloyd steamer Donau the next day. We 
had ten cans and 10,000 gallons of Croton water in the 
steamer's cemented water tanks below. We stood six- 
hour watches and worked hard, through all the horrors 
of sea-sickness, but we didn't let a little thing like that 
interfere with duty. The illness only lasted three days, 
and the fry were doing well. We then siphoned out the 
dead, which were 200, not more than would have died 
in the river. Every three hours each can was one-third 
emptied and refilled with fresh water. On the 9th the 
fish had absorbed their sacs, and, by their lively dart- 
ings, were looking for food, and as what they fed upon 
must necessarilv be small we washed pieces of fresh 



Other Fresh-Water Pishes With Free Eggs. 199 

beef, fish and liver in the water, but to no purpose. My 
chary of losses shows the following : August 5th, 9 ; 
6th, 200; 7th, 1,000; 8th, 20; 9th, 100; loth, 3,000; 
nth, 500; I2th, 1,200; 13th, 5,000; 14th, the whole lot 
of about 90,000. We had hopes of pulling them through 
until the 12th, when they were eight days old, and we 
could see they were weakening. We were at South- 
ampton when the last fish died, but went on to Berlin 
and reported. If we could have planted them in the 
Weser on the 12th it would have looked like a success, 
but I think the fry were then too weak to take food. 



THE BELL AND MATHER HATCHING CONE. 

At the beginning of the shad season on the Delaware 
in 1875 Prof. Baird asked me if, in my opinion, shad 
fry could be taken to Germany. My answer was : "Yes; 
if we can hatch them en route, and delay the hatching 
from four to eight days, and so get the fry there before 
they are enfeebled by starvation ; but we don't know 
how long shad eggs may be retarded, as no one has 
experimented in that direction, and as they spawn on a 
rising temperature, it is evident that we cannot ice them 
as heavily as we can the eggs of Salmonidce.'' 

The professor gave the matter a moment's thought, 
and asked : "Would you like to experiment on this 
line and try it again, if you believe you can retard the 
hatching and get the fry safely over?" 

Then it was settled that I should try it in my own 
way, and I began in the basement of the Smithsonian 
Institution with the arrangement here figured. 

Fig. I is the experimental "hatcher." A is the reser- 
voir furnished with a cock B, bv which the flow 



200 Modem Fishculliire in Fresh and Salt Water. 

through the rubber pipe C is regulated. E is the 
'"hatcher" with a wire cloth bottom at F. The water 
enters at D and strikes a distributer, Fig. 2 H, passes 
up through the wire on which the eggs lay, and out 




m^ 




through the spout G, which is provided with a strain- 
er. Fig 3 is the arrangement of a gang of hatchers, 
each one hung so as to swing on a frame; the frame 
also can be hung instead of standing upon legs if 
thought advisable. By means of No. i a valuable 
series of experiments can be made with water at dif- 
ferent temperatures, and so it can be accurately de- 



Other Frcsh-lVater Fishes With Free Eggs. 201 

termined in what time the eggs will hatch, and how 
low a figure they will stand. The passage to Ger- 
many may take twelve days, and two more should be 
allowed for travel there, making fourteen in all. The 
eggs usually hatch in rivers in three or four days at a 
temperature of 70° to 80°. We used no ice on the 
passage, and the water averaged about 62°. 

The idea in Fig. i was to have a man on duty night 
and day to pour the water back into reservoir A a few 
times and then renew the water, just as would be 
necessary at sea. The eggs did not hatch, and Prof, 
Milner, who had charge of all the shad work, came to 
see me. I complained of bad air and the proximity 
to a rancid old whale skin, and when he said I had 
carte blanche to go where I pleased and no restric- 
tions of any kind W'Ould be placed upon me, I girded 
my loins, took Charles F. Bell, a young medical stu- 
dent, and went to Point Pleasant, Pa., up the Dela- 
ware River, where I put up my "laboratory" on the 
upper piazza of a hotel which opened from our bed- 
rooms. 

Much time was lost in experimenting; it was found 
that a temperature below 55° Fahr. was fatal to the 
eggs; that the broad screen, placed as in Fig. i, did 
not give motion to the eggs, and that motion was as 
necessary as circulation. The embryo developed to 
a certain point, but had no pigment in its eyes. Then 
we had a hatcher made like Fig. 4, with a small screen 
at the bottom of the cone. Eureka ! It gave motion, 
and now the lowest temperature was all we needed to 
know. Prof. Milner telegraphed from Holyoke, 
Mass. : "Monroe A. Green and Welcher have ap- 
paratus to hatch at sea ; if you are not ready, will send 
them." Bell advised that I answer ''ready," as the 



202 Modern FishcuUure in Fresh and Salt Water. 

temptation to go to Europe on a free trip was strong 
within the boy ; but I was not satisfied about tempera- 
tures and did not wish another failure. My answer 
was: "Not ready; let them go." I do not remember 
the details of their apparatus, but do know that their 
eggs were all dead before the ship got outside of 
Sandy Hook. The Rochester "Express" of August 
24, 1875, gives Mr. Green's opinion that jarring in 




Fig. 4. 



Original Bell and Mather Cone. 

transit from Holyoke to New York killed the eggs; 
but, if so, he should have seen this before starting, 
for he knew a dead shad Qgg when he saw it. The 
"Express" says : "The eggs were packed in ice," and 
that tells the story, to me. 

After we had worked out our problem. Bell and I 
went to Holyoke and put up our hatcher in the kitchen 
of the hotel, and Prof. Milner said: ''You've found 



Other Fresh-Water Fishes With Free Eggs. 203 

it ! Here is a way to hatch fish eggs in bulk and keep 
them free from fungus ; get a patent on it." 

I do not look favorably on patent rights, and espe- 
cially in fishculture, where we all use each other's 




The Chase Jar. 

brains with more or less credit ; some never give any. 
From this sprang the "Chase" jar, which was pat- 
ented, and also the McDonald jar. 

The Chase Jar is round-bottomed, with an open 
top, which is surmounted by a metal rim having a lip 
for an overflow. The water is conveyed to the bot- 
tom of the jar by a heavy glass tube having a foot 



204 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

with points on it to allow the water to flow between 
them. 

The McDonald Jar has a flat metal top screwed 
down tight on a rubber ring ; through the top are holes 




McDonald Jar in Action. — Fig i. Jar filled with eggs 
emptying into jar for fry, with strainer on outlet pipe. 
Fig. 2. Aquarium jar with strainer on outlet emptying into 
a shorter jar to prevent siphon from sucking dry. 

for two glass tubes, inlet and outlet, and these holes 
have recesses to hold small rubber rings on which 
hollow screws make the holes water-tight. Each of 
these jars has its admirers. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

STRIPED BASS OR ROCKFisH (Roccus Hneafus) . 

As the striped bass is for some unknown reason 
called ''Rock" and "Rockfish" south of New Jersey, I 




^> 

08 

Pi 
o 

CO 

< 
pq 

o 

W 
I— I 

C/5 



2o6 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

give both names. It is a splendid fish for angler or 
epicure^ and comes to the New York market weighing 
from half a pound to sixty pounds and over. The 
smah ones are called "pan bass," and sell for more per 
pound than the larger fish, which go to restaurants for 
boiling. All the large ones are females and come to 
market filled with spawn in May and June. The big 
fish winter under the ice in the Hudson about Sing 
Sing, and are caught there in great numbers. Where 
they spawn in great numbers is not known. If there 
is any grander fish, so easily hatched and so neglected 
by the fishculturist, I don't know what it is. 

Several men, as well as myself, have hatched this 
fish by accidentally catching them when hatching shad 
and were fortunate enough to get a pair. I did this 
at Castleton, on the Hudson, and at Fish Haul, on the 
Pamunky River, Virginia ; but it was accident that 
brought them. They spawn in fresh water, but no 
man seems to know where to get them in quantity. 

Some years ago Mr. S. G. Worth, of the United 
States Fish Commission, reported that spawning 
striped bass could be found in numbers in the Neuse 
River, North Carolina, and I think he hatched some 
there. They may be handled and treated as we treat 
shad eggs. 

This closes the list of strictly fresh-water fishes 
which we propagate that have free or non-adhesive 
■eggs. AH the near relatives of the striped bass, such 
as white bass, R. chrysops; yellow bass, Morone in- 
terriipta, and white perch, ikf, Americana, have adhe- 
sive eggs. 



SECTION V, 



ADHESIVE EGGS. 

With eggs which are free the fishculturist has plain 
saiHng, but his trouble begins when he tackles the 
adhesive ones, for after all his care in separating them 
he never knows when he may not find them "all balled 
up" and the inner ones dying. Ten years ago it was 
thought t®.be good work to hatch 30 per cent, of ad- 
hesive eggs, but they do better now. 

There seem to be two classes of adhesive eggs, as I 
have observed them under the microscope. To my 
astonishment, I read Mr. J. J. Stranahan's article on 
the use of the microscope in the Report of the Ameri- 
can Fisheries Society for 1898. I have not room to 
quote it, nor the discussion following it. Mr.'Strana- 
han advocated the use of the instrument, and the fact 
was developed that few hatcheries, State or Govern- 
ment, possessed this necessary instrument of the fish- 
culturist. How a fishculturist gets along without one 
of low power — high powers are of no use to him — I 
don't know. At Cold Spring Hatbor every one of 
my men could adjust and use a low-pressure micro- 
scope. The instrument was my private property, and 
I don't know if there is one there now or not. 

This may seem to be a digression, but it is not, 

207 ' 



2o8 Modern Fishcultitre in Fresh and Salt Water. 

Only by the microscope could one see that the egg of 
a smelt was adhesive, but not glutinous. As I un- 
derstand it, a glutinous Qgg has some sticky envelope 
which attaches anywhere it strikes. The ^gg of a 
smelt throws out a sort of "foot stalk," which acts like 
a sucker in attaching it to objects; hence the distinc- 
tion between ''glutinous" and "adhesive," at least in 
my vocabulary. 

The old plan was to work the eggs by hand, through 
sieves, and by more or less violent means rub off the 
mucous coating. Messrs. Nevin, Clark, Page and oth- 
ers hit on the use of earth or clay about the same time, 
and Prof. Reighard, of the Michigan Commission, 
found cornstarch to be excellent for this purpose. I 
had no occasion to try these things, for the only ad- 
hesive eggs which came my way were those of the 
smelt, which has a foot stalk like a wineglass, but 
seems to be capable of throwing this out from any side, 
and to do it again after one is broken off. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 



THE ADIRONDACK FROSTFISH. 

This small whitefish, Coregonus quadrilateralis, is 
a round-bodied fish, as its specific name im.plies ; also 
called "round fish," "shad waiter" and "Menomonee 
whitefish ;" comes out of the deep waters to spawn in 
the streams in the fall and is caught in great numbers 
and salted for winter use. It ranges from northern 



Adhesive Eggs. 200 

New York and New Hampshire to Lake Superior and 
Alaska. It is hatched in great numbers by the State 
of New York. 

There are other members of the whitefish tribe, and 
all are worth cultivating. Never having hatched this 
fish, I made inquiry of Mr. John G. Roberts, formerly 
m^ charge of the Adirondack station of the New York- 
Fish Commission. Under date of March 26, 1899, 
Mr. Roberts writes as follows : 

"The frostfish eggs are quite adhesive and very 
heavy. I had some whitefish eggs, and being crowded 
for room for my frostfisli eggs last fall, I took a jar 




Adirondack Frostfish. 



partly full of whitefish eggs and filled it with eggs of 
the frostfish. The latter settled at the bottom at once 
and did not mix, showing them to be very heavy " 

It seems singular that species as closelv related in 
structure and habits should dift'er so much 'in the char- 
acter of their eggs. We find the same thing in the 
genus Morone, the striped bass and the white perch 
On Long Island the tomcod is sometimes called 
trostfish, ^ and m other places the smelt is so desig- 
nated, but this is a fish which has no other popular 
name than frostfish, and therefore should be left to 
enjoy it; is one of the "whitefishes," sometimes called 



^to Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

the "round whitefish,'^ because it is not deeper than 
broad, but as it has a square body Richardson called 
it Coregonus quadrilaterale, and other fellows have 
changed the generic name. The fish is well worthy of 
cultivation for food in the Adirondacks and is propa- 
gated there. The following is from my monograph 
on "Adirondack Fishes," 1882: "This fish is one of 
several species generally called 'whitefish,' the type of 
which is the large fish of that name found in the Great 
Lakes. I took them in Big Moose, the Fulton chain 
and Clear Pond (near Meacham Lake). They are a 
handsome fish and most excellent for the table. They 
do not take the hook, and are usually captured in the 
fall while running up the brooks to spawn, when they 
are taken in great numbers by traps made of stakes, 
and are salted for winter use by those living in the 
woods. They are classed in the same family with the 
salmon and the trouts, although they have no teeth 
and have large, loose scales. The presence of the 
small adipose second dorsal fin and other comm.on. 
characters seem sufficient to place the genera Core- 
gonus, Argyrosomus and Prosopiurn, the whitefishes 
and so-called lake herrings ; Osmerus, the smelts, and 
Thymalliis, the graylings, in the family Salmonidce.'' 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

SMELT (Osmerus mordax). 

Here is a fish worthy the attention of every State 
Fish Commission which has lakes fed by streams. 



Adhesive Eggs. 21 1 

Once the smelt was placed in the family Salmonidce 
because it had the small adipose second dorsal fin. 
It has been removed from that family, but keeps on 
jjist the same in being one of the most delicate things 
that can be fried for breakfast. It grows to a foot in 
length in ]\Iaine; but one of five inches suits me best, 
as I can eat it head, fins, tail, bones and all, and it is 
better than the big ones. Jordan gives its range as 
"Nova Scotia to \^irginia, sometimes land-locked." 
They live in the fresh w^aters of Lake Champlain, 
where they are called "ice-fish," as they take them 
through the ice in February and March. They are 
also found in other lakes. 

The New York State hatchery at Cold Spring Har- 
bor is immediately below a mill-dam, although it gets 
no water from the mill pond. From the overflow to 
salt water is a shallow stream about 20 feet wide and 
some 500 feet long. The stream had no fish in it ex- 
cept the mummychogs and an occasional trout that 
escaped from the hatchery ponds. I resolved to try 
smelts, and for three years sent men down to a river 
on the south side of Long Island — wx were on the 
north, on the Sound — and bought several hundred 
smelts in the spawning season, took their eggs and 
stocked this nameless stream. After the third year 
we got enough spawning fish without buying them 
and stocked waters on Staten Island and in other 
places. We turned out many millions each year. Mr. 
George Ricardo, at Hackensack, N. J., had begun 
smelt hatching before I did, and had met with success 
by spawning the fish on grass-lined perforated boxes 
placed in the river, letting the young go free. 

Smelt eggs are adhesive, as has been said, but are 
not glutinous. In nature it spawns in swift water, at 



212 Modern Fishciilture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

night, and the eggs adhere to stones or any other 
thing. On a stream where thousands of smelt have 
spawned at night not a fish can be seen by day ; they 
have dropped back into deeper water. My first plant 
of some 30,000 smelt fry in 1885, i^^ ^he stream named, 
resulted in the getting of over 30,000,000 of eggs ten 
years later. 

A smelt weighing 2 ounces will yield 40,000 eggs ; 
the eggs run about 20 to the inch, or about 500,000 to 
the quart. At first we took the spawn by hand and 
broke up the bunching by passing them through a 
sieve several times to break the "foot stalk;" but after 
getting better results from some which had been neg- 
lected in a hatching trough, we merely placed the fish 
in the troughs, covered them from the light and got a 
better impregnation. 

A curious thing in this work is that the fish laid 
their eggs in the stream in less than six inches of 
water, in direct sunlight, and the great increase shows 
that they must have hatched in great numbers. In 
our hatchery we had to cover the jars from even dif- 
fused light or they would die. 

Perhaps nature provides for this in the bunching 
habit. During the first years of experimenting with 
smelts I sent out a lot to the Adirondacks in bunches. 
My instructions w^ere : "No matter how decayed or 
fungused they are on the outside, nor how badly they 
smell, don't throw them away. Open the bunches and 
you will find them bright and alive inside." The eggs 
went up in the Bisby Lake region, but I could never 
get a reply from the man there ; but it seemed to me at 
that time as if nature protected the inner eggs from 
light and too much oxygen by allowing them to ball up 
in that way ; but then how did the little fish in the mid- 



Adhesive Eggs. 21 3 

die get out? Here is a problem. In nature the smelt 
lays its eggs where the March sun shines on them 
and they hatch. In the hatchery a mild, diffused 
light through green window-shades will kill them, I 
give it up. 

SMELT IN NEW HAMPSHIRE. 

Under date of December ii, 1879, Mr. Samuel 
Webber writes from Manchester, N. H., as follows : 
''The fresh-water smelt has been planted and accli- 
mated in our inland lakes during the last ten years, 
and is now very plenty in Winnepesaukie, Squam and 
Sunapee, besides getting a foothold in Massabesie and 
North wood, where we have placed them." 

There is but one smelt, and it lives in both salt and 
fresh water, but spawns in streams. 

In "Forest and Stream" of April 7, 1881, a cor- 
respondent, misled by the name of "frostfish," wrote 
that the smelt was found in many Adirondack lakes. 
So much for popular names. 



CHAPTER XXV. 



THE BLACK BASSES. 



The two species are named from the comparative 
size of their mouths, and are not at all difficult to dis- 
tinguish if carefully looked at until the characters are 
fixed in the mind. Then a glance suffices. I will 



214 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

not go into all the points of difference, but by men- 
tioning the salient points in connection with the cuts 
one should be able to pick them out. 



SMALL MOUTH {Micro peter US dolomieu). 

Bone of upper jaw does not extend beyond the eye 
—the mouth is measured when shut — color nearly a 
uniform dark green, three bronze bars across cheeks, 
scales at base of soft dorsal and anal fins ; smaller 
scales; eye usually red. 



BIG MOUTH (M. salmoides). 

Upper jaw extends beyond eye, color dark green 
with a distinct median band, below which the color is 
lighter ; cheek bars not so distinct, no scales on fins, 
scales larger. It is called another name in some parts 
of New York and New Jersey, but as it is time that 
was dropped I will not mention it. 

Often these fishes are found in the same waters, 
especially in large lakes. The big mouth is best suited 
for small, shallow lakes with mud and weeds, but I 
usually advise to put in some of each and the fittest 
will survive. In 1884 I put into a lake at Cold Spring 
Harbor, New York, a bit of water of perhaps 30 to 40 
acres, spring fed, and from 2 to 15 feet deep, 30 small 
mouth and 4 big mouth bass. The latter thrived, but 
I never saw a small mouth taken from the lake. The 
fish had come a long distance and some had fungus on 
them when planted. 

Their culture consists in planting them and pro- 



2l6 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Watev. 

tecting the water for a few years. They sweep nests 
in the gravel, lay their glutinous eggs in them and 
watch the nests, fighting ofif all intruders and fanning 
the Qgg% with their tails for circulation. The eggs 
hatch in four to six days, according to temperature, 
and remain a day or two on the nest, plainly visible as 
a dark mass. Then, when the sac is about to be ab- 
sorbed, they rise, and the old fish remains under them 
until they disperse to seek food. 

We cannot take their eggs and hatch them, and as 
the parents do so well at it there is little need to try it. 
If young are needed for stocking, the nests should 
be watched and the young taken in dip ngts which are 
lined with millinet or cheese-cloth. 

The small mouth is the best fish for streams. In 
muddy, wxedy ponds the flesh of the bass, and all other 
fishes, is muddy in flavor, and in warm weather much 
so. The two are about equal as game fishes, notwith- 
standing a popular notion to the contrary. 

Lieut. -Col. Isaac Arnold, Jr., U. S. A., made ex- 
periments in hatching black bass from 1879 to 1881. 
Pie was then a major and was stationed at the armory 
at Indianapolis, Ind. He let the fish spawn naturally 
and removed the old fish when the young were hatched. 
In the Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission 
for 1882, Col. Arnold says : 

*'The male presses the ova from the female by a 
series of bites or pressure along her belly with his 
mouth, the female lying on her side during the opera- 
tion. The male ejects the milt upon or over the roe 
from time to time, and the spawning process lasts for 
two or three days." 

A few years ago, at a meeting of the American 
Fisheries Society, the Hon. Herschel Whitaker read 




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2i8 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water, 

a paper on "The Artificial Propagation of the Small 
Mouth Black Bass," in which he said : "An experi- 
mental station was placed on the Thorn Apple River 
in Michigan. Here two ponds were constructed and 
150 adult fish placed in them. Last week the female 
fish showed disposition to spawn. At the same time 
they took a large female from the river, stripped her 
and impregnated the eggs. These were placed first 
in jars and then transferred to trays. On the fourth 
day they began to hatch, and on the following day all 
were completed, and a few days ago there were sev- 
eral hundred fine, healthy fish. When they were first 
hatched they were almost invisible.'' 

Mr. Whitaker does not say that the male was ripped 
open to obtain the milt, but, as far as I am informed, 
this has been found necessary in all such experiments, 
and the impossibility of getting milt from the male by 
stripping has been one of the obstacles in the handling 
of the eggs. 

Knowing that Mr. W. F. Page had experimented 
with black bass recently when in charge of a hatchery 
in Missouri, I wrote him and obtained the following: 



Black Bass Culture. 

By W. F. Page. 

Strictly speaking, the artificial propagation of the 
black bass is, up to this time, an unsolved problem ; 
and, in my opinion, will forever remain such. In 
other places my reasons for this opinion have been 
given in full. Moreover, in the matter of the handling 
and care of the alevins (produced naturally) and the 
feeding of the very young fry, only the least fractiofl 



Adhesive Eggs. 219 

of knowledge has been gained. It may be accepted 
that up to the time the young black bass is able to 
forage on his own account fishculture is a baffled art 
and of no account in the multiplication of this species. 
Up to that time dependence must be placed in natural 
spawning and hatching. 

Black bass which have lost the shyness and fright 
incident to capture and transportation become do- 
mesticated, readily spawn, and rear their young in 
artificial ponds ; and only by this method can the fish- 
culturist expect to secure any considerable number of 
young bass. They may be allowed to spawn in the 
stock pond, from one-quarter of an acre or larger in 
size, or an annex spawning pond may be used. Dr. 
Henshall has given the best description of a bass nest : 
"Slightly concaved, with a diameter twice the length 
of the fish." Gravel is undoubtedly excellent ma- 
terial for spawning nests, though by no means a neces- 
sity, for I have frequently seen bass spawn on earth. 
I am informed that the artificial bass nests devised 
some three years ago have not proved an unqualified 
success. 

The spawning season varies for almost every State, 
and frequently in the same State. Moreover, the sea- 
son is rarely the same in any one locality. My ob- 
servations lead me to think that the bass will not be 
found nesting before the ground becomes warm 
enough for gardening purposes, though occasional in- 
stances of spawning on much lower temperature have 
been noted. The period of incubation averages about 
nine days, and the alevin stage occupies about six 
days more. Shortly after the food sac is completely 
absorbed the school, heretofore guarded by the parent 
fish, disperses in search of natural food — daphnia, cy- 



220 Modern Fishciilture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

clops, etc. If the pond has been so constructed that 
a good portion of it is shallow water — from six inches 
deep to feather-edge — and is old enough to have pro- 
duced a fair crop of aquatic vegetation, the young 
will find abundance of natural food. When about an 
inch long they will be found foraging on gamuiarus 
and coriza, and later on larger crustaceans, particu- 
larly crayfish and smaller fishes. 

When a majority of the crop measures one and a 
half to two inches long it is advisable to remove them 
from the spawning pond. This period occurs before 
the breeders have, usually, finished spawning. To re- 
move the early hatch without disturbing the late 
spawners, construct the pond to have a long, narrow 
neck, not over four feet wide, and running to a point 
where the inflow enters ; ten or fifteen feet from the 
inflow separate the neck from the pond proper by a 
wire screen of one-quarter to three-eighth inch mesh. 
The young bass readily find their way through the 
screen, and show no inclination to leave as long as 
food is present. The screened-ofif neck should be 
closely watched, not only for the numerous enemies 
of the young bass, but for any sign of cannibalism. 
To net the young bass from the neck is such an easy 
matter as not to require explanation. 

If it is necessary to keep the young bass for even a 
day before shipping, it is of the utmost importance 
that they be carefully sorted, and the different sizes 
placed in different receptacles. If the fry are to be 
kept for several weeks, or even days, they must be fed, 
or cannibalism will surely reduce the number. Any 
kind of fish, chopped or ground fine, makes a most 
acceptable food, and it is doubtful if bass fry will 
thrive on any food except such as has grown in water; 



Adhesive Eggs. 221 

though adult bass have been kept on beef and beef 
livers. Bass fry take kindly to a fish diet, and thrive 
and grow on it with little labor and time. 

It is doubtful if the practice of distributing very 
young bass from nests — alevins — will prove success- 
ful. They are exceedingly tender and peculiarly sus- 
ceptible to changes of temperature. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

THE CRAPPIES. 

Like the black basses, there are two species of this 
genus, and they are difficult for the novice to distin- 
guish. They are good fishes for warm ponds and 
streams. In an article on "The Two Crappies," in 
"Forest and Stream" of June 25, 1898, I took the 
stand that, as they are as nearly alike as the black 
basses are, they should be so classed. Heretofore but 
one species had been called crappie, but as each had 
a string of local names, many of them absurd, I ven- 
tured to hope that in time my simplified nomencla- 
ture will be accepted. 



SMALL MOUTH CRAPPIE (Poifioxys spavoides) . 

This pretty fish ranges from the kkes and ponds of 
the Great Lake region, western New York, New Jer- 
sey, the streams of the Carolinas and Georgia east of 



222 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

the mountains, the Mississippi valley, especially north- 
ward, it being the most northerly fish of the two. It 
prefers clear, quiet waters where the bottom is cov- 
ered with grass, and it shuns muddy waters. The 
species cannot be separated by color. Both are ''un- 
dershot," as they speak of the protruding lower jaw 
of the bulldog and pug, but the small mouth is the 
least so. (See cuts.) It has seven or eight spines in 
its dorsal fin, while the other has but six. 



BIG MOUTH CRAPPiE (Pomoxys amildar is) . 

This is the more southern species. To one accus- 
tomed to both, the elongated thickened lower jaw 
would ^proclaim the big mouth at once without count- 
ing dorsal spines. These fishes are more alike than 
the black basses, yet they are as distinct in structure 
and habits. The big mouth loves muddy bottoms, but 
is often found with its brother. Note the general 
shape of the fishes and the smoother outline of the 
small mouth. 

Both these fish are more compressed than the black 
basses, quite as much so as the sunfish. They are 
good pan-fish, growing to a foot in length and of some 
two pounds weight. 

CULTURE. 

What has been said in this regard of the black bass 
may be said for the crappies. They have always been 
favorites of mine and are worth pond room with the 
black bass. 



224 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water, 



NAMES. 



When you know that such names as goggle-eye, 
goggle-eyed perch — used also for th^ rock bass — 
grass bass, strawberry bass, bitter head, lamplighter, 
bank-lick bass, calico bass and sac-a-lai, are applied to 
these fishes indiscriminately, as well as crappie, you 
will agree that it is time for some one to take hold 
and straighten out the tangle, and this I have under- 
taken in the hope that in time the names I have sug- 
gested will stick. 



VALUE OF THE CRAPPIES. 

The State of New York has distributed a few 
small rn^outh crappies under the absurd name of 
*' strawberry bass," but they should be in every pond 
where there are no trout, but where perch and sunfish 
abound. They have been neglected because we have 
a wealth of such fishes and no writer has presented 
the claims of these to the angler and fishculturist, if we 
except the late Prof. Kirtland, of Ohio, who said of 
the small mouth crappie, using the local name : 

"The 'grass bass' has not hitherto been deemed 
worthy of consideration by fishculturists ; yet, from a 
long and intimate acquaintance with its merits, I hesi- 
tate not to pronounce it the fish for the million. [Ital- 
ics are Dr. Kirtland's.] It is a native of our Western 
rivers and lakes, where it usually resorts to deep and 
sluggish waters ; yet in several instances, where it has 
found its way into cold and rapid streams, and even 
small-sized brooks, by means of the constructing of 







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22^ Modern Fishciiiture in Fresh and Salt Waief. 

canals or by the hand of man, it has adapted itself to 
the change^ and in two or three years stocked to over- 
flowing these new locahties. As a pan. fish, for the 
table, it is surpassed by few other fresh-water species. 
For endurance and rapidity of increase it is unequaled. 
. . . The grass bass is perfectly adapted to stock- 
ing ponds. It will thrive without care in very small 
ponds of sufficient depth. ... It will in nowise 
interfere with the cultivation of any number of 
species, large or small, in the same waters. It will 
live harmoniously with all others, and while its struc- 
ture and disposition restrain it from attacking any 
other but very small fry, its formidable armature of 
spinous rays in the dorsal and abdominal fins will 
guard it against attacks of even the voracious pike." 

As the food of the crappies is the same as that of 
the sunfishes and all other fresh-water fishes with 
compressed sides, i. e. small fish, crustaceans, insects 
and their larvse, we must consider that their destruc- 
tiveness is that of their class. I do not know of a 
fish, in America or on any other continent, which 
takes no animal food. When the carp was introduced 
into America it was heralded as "a sheep among 
fishes," which grew to great weight on vegetation 
alone. It is true that the carp eats much vegetation 
and is fond of that green conferva which ignorant 
people call "frog spittle," or "frog spawn," with which 
the frog has as much to do as the editor of "Forest 
and Stream has," but the carp also loves worms, insect 
larvse, and will take a small fish if the fish can't 
escape. 

There may be fishes which are strict vegetarians, if 
so I don't know them. The brook suckers love trout 
eggs and work the mud for insect larvse; the stur- 



Adhesive Eggs. 227 

geons mouth over mud for the snails and other animal 
life which they get, and we must only consider the 
question of how much and what kind of animal life a 
fish consumes in order to plant it in our lakes and 
streams. 

Speaking as a fishculturist, I would, if I could, ex- 
terminate every pike, pickerel and mascalonge in the 
waters of the earth, for the reason that their diet is ex- 
clusively fish, and they consume a hundred times their 
weight in other fishes and then are not as good for the 
table as some that they have eaten. 

As an angler, I take no note of what it costs in good 
food fish to raise a pike to ten pounds weight, if the 
pike will only condescend to take my hook. This is a 
logical appeal from Philip sober to Philip drunk. As 
a fishculturist, the ratio of food consumed to value of 
fish for market is a vital one, as much so as the grow- 
ing of horses, cattle, pigs and poultry is to the farmer ; 
but when my fly is cast, or a baited hook is spinning 
astern, there is an alter ego, another self, watching for 
results, and the latter fellow never stops to consider 
whether his catch is worth all the food it has devoured 
tc enable it to pull down the scales to a creditable point, 
or whether the balance is on the other side. As a fish- 
cukurist, I would like to exterminate the whole pike 
family — pike, pickerel and mascalonge ; but as an 
angler, thinking only of personal sport, the point of 
view differs. 

HABITS. 

Although not a climbing fish, like that peculiar 
perch of India which ascends trees, yet the crappies 
are often found in tree tops, when the trees have fallen 



22S Modern Pishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

into the water. Here they find protection and food ; 
the hmbs are the abode of snails, crustaceans and 
worms of various kinds as well as of small fishes, for 
the crappies are omnivorous in their tastes. The pref- 
erence of the small mouth for clear and colder waters 
has been alluded to, but as many lakes have both grassy 
and muddy spots, they afford homes for both species. 
I have taken the small mouth crappie in springholes 
while standing on the ice, but they were dipped up 
with a net, and 1 don't know if they would take a hook 
in winter. This was in Grant County, Wisconsin, in 
1857, and we wanted fish for the table. This is told 
in detail in "Men I Have Fished With," page 309. 
There were black bass there at the time, and they 
sometimes lie dormant in winter, while the pike and 
the perch feed the year round. I have fished through 
the ice with small minnows for bait, and where crap- 
pies were plenty, but never took one. This, however, 
does not prove that they do not feed in winter. 



CHAPTER XXVH. 

WHITE PERCH {Morone Americana). 

This is a good little fish often seen in New York 
markets. It is not white, but is a light olive on the 
back and a little lighter on the sides. It is found in 
brackish waters on our eastern coast from Nova Sco- 
tia to South Carolina. It ascends rivers and spawns 
in fresh water. It is often land-locked in fresh-water 



^30 Modern Pishculture in Fresh and Salt Watev, 

ponds and breeds there. It rises to the fly quite well 
and grows to the length of ten inches. 

It spawns shortly after the ice leaves the ponds and 
attaches its eggs to floating sticks, weeds, etc. They 
spawn in early morning at the surface and make quite 
a splashing. I have obtained the vv^eeds -bearing the 
eggs and hatched them in McDonald hatching jars. 
The eggs are very small. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

THE PIKE-PERCHES. 

Here are two more fishes plagued with a multiplicity 
of common names. I follow the late Dr. George 
Brown Goode in choosing the above title, and he was 
one of our best authorities. The old name of Luci- 
operca given by Linnaeus means Lucius a pike, and 
pcrca a perch. It was a perch with the habits of the 
pike. There are two species; the largest and most im- 
portant one resembles the only European species. This 
is commonly known as "wall-eyed pike," from its large 
glassy eye. 

THE WALL-EYED PIKE (Sttsostcdion vitreum) . 

This fish ranges from the Great Lakes through the 
smi'il lakes of western New York, north through Brit- 
ish A.merica and south in the Susquehanna, Ohio and 



Adhesive Eggs. 21 i 

rivers in western Virginia, North Carolina and Geor- 
gia. "In the upper lakes, where the true pike Esov 
liicius IS known as the pickerel, the 6^. vitrcum is called 
the pike/ with such local variations as 'blue pike' 
Vellow pike,' 'green pike' and grass pike.' In Ohio 
Tennessee and western North Carolina it robs Esov of 
another of its names and is called a 'jack.' In Lake 
Erie, however, it is generally known as 'pickerel ' The 
name 'salmon' is quite generally applied in rivers 
where no member of the Salnwnidcu is found This 
IS notably the fact in the tributaries of the Mississippi 
Ohio and Susquehanna. 'Okow,' sometimes heard in 




The Wall-eyed Pike (Sfhostedion Vitreum). 

the lake region, is evidently a corruption of 'okun' 
and okunj,' Polish and Russian names for the com- 
mon perch The French Canadians on the lakes call it 

doree and 'dory' is a name which has found its way 
into books. . . . The name Svall-eyed pike' is 
coming into favor and has alreadv replaced some mis- 
nomers long prevalent. If it must be used, Vall-eye' 
IS of course to be preferred to the misleadino- 'wall- 
eyed pike.' To me it seems a most repulsive and un- 
desirable name, but others find it appropriate. "- 
GooDE, American Fishes." 
The wall-eye grows to a weight of thirty pounds or 



232 Modern Pishcultiire in Fresh and Salt WaieV. 

more, and is distinguished from the other species by 
its larger eye. a black blotch on the last part of its first 
dorsal fin. In the illustrations of the "Fisheries In- 
dustries" from which my cuts have been taken, the 
wall-eye is called by the name of the other fish ; some- 
body blundered. Goode has them correct. 

THE SAUCER {S . cauadeiise) . 

This is a smaller fish and is not classed as a "hard 
fish" on the Great Lakes, but is placed among the in- 
ferior "soft fish." It has a black spot at the base of 
the pectoral fins, smaller eye, and rows of spots on its 




The Sauger or Sand Pike (Sticostedion Canadense). 

first dorsal. It is a more northern species, ranging 
from the Ohio northward. It is also called "sand 
pike," which in the plates of the "Fisheries Industries" 
is misprinted "land pike." 

Hatching Wall-eyed Pike Eggs. 

By James Nevin, Supt. Wisconsin Fish Commission. 

To the best of my knowledge, the first pike eggs 
hatched on the American continent were coll'^cted and 



Adhesive Eggs. 233 

hatched by me at the Sandwich, Ontario, fish hatchery, 
during the spring of 1877. On the first day of April 
of that year I went to West Bay City, at the mouth of 
Saginaw Bay, which was the fishermen's headquar- 
ters, and where, I was informed, a large number of 
wall-eyed pike were caught. On the second day of 
April I went out on a fishing smack, and from four 
pound nets there were lifted five tons of as fine fish as 
man ever looked on. I secured about ten quarts of 
eggs, which, I believe, were the first wall-eyed pike 
eggs taken in American waters. I continued to work 
here, going out on the boat from day to day, until I 
had seven boxes of eggs, which I shipped to Detroit. 
The Sandwich hatchery is located across the river 
from Detroit. I had left a Frenchman named Daniel 
Semande in charge of the hatchery. Semande was a 
man who could turn his hand to any kind of work, and 
he was possessed of the idea that he could hatch fish 
as well, and possibly better, than any other man in the 
country. He had been a fisherman all his life. Se- 
mande was desirous of trying his hand at hatching 
these eggs, and said if I would send the eggs to him 
he would take as good care of them as if I were there 
to look after them. The eggs were placed in hatch- 
ing cans. Semande wrote me every day, assuring me 
that the eggs were "doing fine." Later, however, I 
received a telegram from Mrs. Nevin, advising me to 
come home, as there was not a live egg in the batch. 
I took the first train home, and on arrival found that 
the eggs were all dead. I had these thrown out, and 
returned to West Bay City to get another batch. I 
succeeded in obtaining some ten millions eggs, which 
I took home with me. From this lot we hatched one 
million fry. However, I did not feel satisfied with the 



234 Modern Fishcultnrc in Fresh and Salt Water. 

result, and was of the opinion I could do better if I 
could get the eggs for another trial. 

On the 1 6th day of May of the same year I left for 
St. Clair River, where pike spawn much later than 
on any other grounds that I know of. Usually they 
begin to spawn as soon as the ice goes out of the 
river, lake or bay, as the case may be; but on the St. 
Clair River they do not begin to spawn until the 15th 
of May. I succeeded in collecting 20,000,000 eggs 
on this river, which I took with me to the hatchery. 
Of this batch we hatched 3,500,000 fry, as is shown 
by my report for that year, which was a small per- 
centage of the number of eggs taken. 

In the spring of 1878 I again went to Saginaw Bay 
to collect pike eggs. While there I met Mr. Orin M. 
Chase, of the Michigan Fish Commission, to whom I 
related my experience and partial failure with pike 
eggs the previous year. After Mr. Chase had been 
there a few days he showed me the eggs he had taken, 
and said : "Jim, I will hatch 90 per cent, of these 
eggs." I told him I w^ould call around and see his 
eggs before they began to hatch. Mr. Chase left for 
the Detroit hatchey with his eggs ; at the same time 
I started for the Sandwich hatchery with those I had 
taken. Just before the fish began to hatch, I visited 
the Detroit hatchery to compare notes with Mr. Chase. 
Mr. Chase told me, "The jig is up ; I will not hatch 
five per cent, of the eggs I took.'' T secured that sea- 
son from Saginaw Bay and St. Clair River 50,000,- 
000 eggs, and hatched and planted 6,000,000 fry from 
those eggs. 

The difficulty in this work was the adhesiveness of 
the eggs. We could not keep them from sticking to- 
gether. For days after they were put in jars they 



Adhesive Eggs. 235 

would bunch up, and we had to take them out two and 
three times per day, and perhaps oftener, and run 
them through a wire screen with a mesh just large 
enough to permit the eggs to pass through one at a 
time. We killed a large part of the eggs in handling 
them and working them through the screens. 

After I came to Wisconsin, for three years we col- 
lected our pike eggs at the mouth of the Wolf River. 
We took from 150,000,000 to 200,000,000 eggs each 
year ; but were able to hatch not more than 5 per cent. 
of this vast number. The difficulty here was that the 
milt came from the male fish in clots and would not 
dissolve in the pan. After trying different methods 
to overcome the difficulty, but without success, we de- 
cided not to collect any more eggs at that point. Three 
years ago I was ordered to plant some full-grow^n pike 
in the lakes at Waupaca. For convenience in trans- 
portation. Gill's Landing, a railroad station some 
twenty miles up the river from where we had taken 
eggs, was selected as the place to get the fish. To 
our great surprise, we found the male fish here in 
prime condition. We took a quantity of eggs and 
hatched fully 60 per cent, of them. The only hypothe- 
sis on which I can account for our failure to impreg- 
nate the eggs at the mouth of the river is that the male 
fish were not ripe when they entered the river. 

For several years we have collected eggs from Pike 
Lake, in Price County. This lake is situated in the 
pine forests, twenty-four miles from a railroad. A 
hatch of 50 per cent, is a large average ; but we have 
impregnated fully 80 per cent, cf the eggs taken from 
this lake. The fish are of the large yellow variety ; the 
male will produce more milt than a dozen males from 
any other waters in which I have collected eggs. 



236 Modern Fishcidture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

The eggs from different localities vary in size. 
Those from fish taken from Pike Lake will average 
80,000 to the quart, while those from fish taken from 
the Wolf River, Green Bay, Saginaw Bay or St. Clair 
River will average 120,000 to the quart. 

The course which we pursue in collecting, fertiliz- 
ing and hatching the eggs is as follows : We get on 
the grounds early and have all preparations made for 
tne fisfi when they come. The males come a few days 
ahead of the females ;«but we have our nets set and cor- 
ral a large number of males, which we keep until the 
run of female fish comes on. They are caught in 
pound or fyke nets. The nets are lifted morning and 
evening, and the fish taken in live boxes and placed in 
crates, which we have prepared for the purpose. Thus, 
when we begin to take spawn, the fish are convenient 
to the spawn taker. A man with a net dips the fish 
into a tub. The spawn taker takes a ripe female from 
the tub and spawns it into a pan containing less than 
half a teacup of water. As soon as the female is 
spawned the male fish is used. Only one female fish 
is spawned into a pan — a fresh pan being provided 
after each. One man attends to the pans. After each 
female has been stripped and enough milt put on the 
eggs, he shakes the pan for a moment to mix the milt 
and eggs, and then sets it aside for some twenty min- 
utes until the eggs become loose. ' When we get eight 
or ten pans, or enough for a tub-full, they are washed 
and separated in a tub in the following manner: We 
procure a quantity of clay or muck, as is most con- 
venient, which we usually sift to remove lumps and 
gravel, and mix it in a tub of water. The eggs are 
then placed in a tub, and a man or boy with a dipper 
keeps them in constant motion in the tub, pouring off 



Adhesive Eggs. 237 

part of the water at intervals of five or ten minutes 
and adding fresh water. This is continued for an 
hour, or until the eggs become hard and will not stick. 
They are then placed in boxes, similar to shad boxes, 
and set in the current of the river, where they are 
kept from one to six days, or until convenient to ship 
them to the hatchery. In shipping the eggs, they are 
placed on wire trays and put in boxes, which are large 
enough to permit two inches of crushed ice to be 
packed on every side. We also put crushed ice on 
the top tray. Our trays are made of galvanized wire- 
cloth. Most hatcheries use flannel cloth on the trays. 
"^Ve have discarded the flannel-covered trays, as we be- 
lieve the wire-cloth is preferable for the reason that 
they are more durable, the water drips through the 
wire more readily than flannel, and a better circula- 
tion is provided. When the eggs are received at the 
hatchery they are taken from the shipping boxes and 
run through a wire screen with a mesh just large 
enough for a single egg to pass through at a time. 
This screening removes all scales or dirt from the 
eggs. They are then put in hatching jars, and they 
work as freely as the eggs of the whitefish. 

We have used muck and clay in our eggs to prevent 
adhesion since the spring of 1884. This method of 
preventing adhesion of the eggs was discovered by us 
accidentally. We were having the usual trouble with 
our pike^eggs, and they were badly bunched up in the 
jars. One day it became necessary for the city to re- 
pair the water main which supplied our hatchery. As 
a result we had a flow of roily water for several hours. 
After the roily water had cleared off it was evident 
that our eggs were working much better. This set us 
to experimenting. We procured some earth, took our 



238 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water, 

eggs out of the jars and put them in tubs filled with 
muddy water. We stirred them in the tubs for sev- 
eral minutes and returned them to the jars. To our 
great delight, the experiment was completely success- 
ful ; and from that day to this we have had no trouble 
in preventing these eggs from sticking or bunching. 

The wall-eyed pike is a fish which will not stand 
much confinement. If they are kept in the crates more 
than three days before the time to spawn, the eggs will 
begin to bunch in the fish and will not loosen up; or 
the tail of the fish will become fungused and the fish 
will soon die. When we see a white spot back of the 
second dorsal fin we at once liberate the fish. 

I have been engaged in the work of fishculture for 
twenty-seven years, but until last spring it remained 
for me to see these fish in the act of spawning natur- 
ally. It was during high water; the stream had over- 
flowed its banks and they were scattered over the 
marshy land adjoining. I stood on a railroad trestle- 
work for an hour and watched hundreds of them in 
the act of spawning. The female would roll over and 
over constantly during the time she threw her eggs, 
while from two to five small male fish gathered around 
her and gave off milt as the eggs came from the fe- 
male. I have often heard men say that the time to go 
spearing with a jack-light was when the fish were 
rolling or bunching, as they could then get two or 
three fish at a throw. I can now fully understand the 
significance of the statement. 

I use the Chase hatching jar for hatching these 
fish. The term of incubation varies with the tem- 
perature of the water used in the jars. In water of 
60° the eggs will hatch in about fifteen days ; in water 
of a temperature of 48° it requires thirty-five days to 



Adhesive Eggs. 239 

hatch. It takes but a few days to absorb the sac ; this 
also depends to a great extent on the temperature of 
the water. After the sac is absorbed the fry should 
be liberated as soon as possible, or a considerable loss 
will be incurred by the little fellows devouring one 
another. 



In the above paper Mr. Nevin has covered the 
ground very well, and it only remains to say that Prof. 
Reighard, of Michigan, in experimenting with these 
eggs, obtained excellent results in overcoming the ad- 
hesiveness by the use of cornstarch. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 



CATFISH. 



These fish, called "bullheads" in New York and 
"bullpouts" and ''hornpouts" in New England, are 
very good table fish for many people. They feed on 
the bottom on worms, fish eggs, or any animal food. 
As they feed mainly at night, they may forage on the 
nests of the black bass; but as this is the first time 
that such a thing has been hinted, I hasten to say that 
it is merely a surmise. This family of fishes protect 
their young. 



240 Modern FishcuUure in Fresh and Salt Water. 

Of catfishes we have two salt-w^ater species and 
sixteen in fresh water, from the great Amieiirus nigri- 
cans, which grows to 100 pounds weight, down to 
small ones which do not get to be over four inches in 
length. The common "bullhead" of New York, A. 
nebulosiis, grows to a length of eighteen inches and 
ranges from New England to Wisconsin, Virginia and 
Texas. The best of all the species for table is the 
''channel cat," or "white cat," Ictalurus punctatus, 
which grows to three feet, and is thus described by 
Jordan : "Oliveaceus, rarely blackish, the sides sil- 
very, almost always with small round dark olive spots ; 
eye large, not wholly in front of middle of head ; mouth 
small ; barbels long ; spines strong, serrate ; Montana 
to Vermont, Georgia and Mexico ; very abundant in 
flowing streams. A handsome fish ; the best in the 
family as food." 

The A. albidus of the Potomac is also called "white 
cat" and "channel cat." It has a stout body and broad 
head and is not spotted. The common names should 
not confound the species. They guard their nests. 

Fin rays soft with a stout pungent spine in the dor- 
sal and pectorals. In the latter fins these spines can 
be set at right angles to the body and locked so that 
they may be broken before they can be pressed down. 
There is a sort of trigger-bone behind these pectoral 
spines which, if touched, allows them to be laid back. 
In former years, when inspecting the commercial fish- 
eries on the Hudson, I discovered this and the knowl- 
edge w^as of value in getting a "bullhead" from a gill 
net where it was entangled. 



Adhesive Eggs. 241 



CHAPTER XXX. 

CARP (Cyprintis carpio). 

The indiscriminate introduction of this fish in Amer- 
ica was a mistake. It was boomed as a great producer 
of good food where no good food grew. It was a 
vegetarian, "a sheep among fishes," quick growing 
and prohfic. All of this is true. The fact is that in 
Germany fish are a luxury and poor people do not eat 
fresh fish. Before the day of railroads fish that 
reached Berlin came by stage coach, and to-day the 
people are prejudiced against all salt-water fish, which 
they say has "a sea taste." This is hereditary preju- 
dice and prevents good sea fish from going to Berlin in 
large quantities. They want their fish alive, and the 
fishmongers have most of their fish in aquaria. Fancy 
this for the thousands of tons that come to New York 
daily ! In the streets of Hamburg can be seen tubs 
with pike "hecht" (esox), perch (barsch) and carp, all 
kept alive by women aerating the water. 

We must remember this in order to understand why 
the Germans consider the carp a good fish ; they know 
no better. They have "improved" breeds of them as 
they have of cattle, from the fully scaled fish to those 
partly naked but with big scales accidentally placed, 
mirrorkarpfen, to those without a scale, lederkarpfen. 
The late Herr von Behr, President of the German 
Fishery Association, induced Prof. Baird to import 
the carp and eulogized it. Prof. Baird did so, and 
to-day no fish is so heartily cursed by Americans as 



2^2 Modern Pishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

the carp. It roots up the water plants, muddies the 
ponds and renders them unfit for other fish, and the 
carp are worthless for the table. They are in the class 
of the soft buffalo fish of the Mississippi, and the 
suckers. 

Great carp of fifteen to twenty pounds come to Ful- 
ton Market, New York, and some Germans, with old 
country memories, buy them; a lot are sold by push 
cart men among the tenements on the East Side, but 
there is little sale for them outside of this. I have eaten 
the carp in Germany, cooked in beer and served with 
a brown beer sauce, but never when I could help it. 

The carp spawn in early summer, the eggs adhering 
to water plants. The fish grow fast, under favorable 
circumstances reaching a weight of ten pounds in three 
years. The Government carp ponds at Washington, 
D. C., overflowed some years ago and let a lot of these 
fish into the Potomac, and the shad fishers and anglers 
are cursing them to-day for a nuisance that can never 
be abated, like our European sparrow. 

It is a significant fact that the United States Fish 
Commission published "A Manual of Fish Culture" in 
1897 and did not mention the carp. 



CASTRATING CARP. 

Here is a curious bit of fish lore translated from the 
"Deustche Fischerei Zeitung, Stettin, of May 16, 1882, 
under the above heading: ''Concerning the question 
asked by Count Gessler about the castration of carp, I 
will quote from an old German fish book entitled 
'Tond and Fishery Husbandry," by Johann Andreas 
Guenther, i8'io, pages 142-144. To bring the*carp to 



Adhesive Eggs. 243 

a high degree of fatness, and also to make their flesh of 
finer flavor, the Englishman, Tull, has discovered and 
recommended castration. This operation can be per- 
formed on the male as well as on the female. The best 
time for the operation is after they have spawned, while 
they are soft and feeble, for then the painful effects are 
not so lasting.' " 

There was more of this, but no detail, and I wrote 
Count Max von dem Borne, a well known German fish- 
culturist, and here is his reply: 

"Berneuchen, March 9, 1881. 
"My Dear Sir: I have your letter of March i, and 
will try to collect something relating to the castration 
of carp, which is entirely unknown to me. Therefore I 
have written to Mr. W. Horak, late Director of the 
large carp ponds of the Prince Schwarzenberg, at 
Wittingen, and the author of the best book on carp 
breeding. I hope he will give us all ever known on the 
subject." 

This was all I ever heard of the matter, until the late 
Prof. Spencer F. Baird wrote me, under date of May 
20, 1886: "Mr. Hessel informs me that the Bretaigne 
carp is the caponized ordinary carp, requiring of course 
a special process to produce this result* * * *,'* 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

THE ALEWIVES. 



These are near relatives of the shad, but having glu- 
tinous eggs are widely separated in this book. They 



244 Modern FishcultUre in Fresh and Salt Water. 

are called ''herrin" on the Hudson River, but the true 
herring, cliipea harengus, does not enter fresh water. 
We have the "branch herring," c. pscudoharengus, and 
the ''ghit herring," c. cestivalis, both of value. They are 
bony, but are eaten fresh and salted in great numbers 
by people living on the rivers. They spawn at night in 
creeks and bayous, among the flotsam, and make a 
great racket in doing it. I have taken the eggs on 
dried eel-grass and hatched them in floating boxes. It 
was the milt of one of these fishes that was used on 
shad eggs when no male shad were at hand. They 
run up the Hudson to Albany, and I have seen them by 
the thousand in a pool below the dam of^the South Side 
Sportsman's Club, on the south side of Long Island, 
and intended to bring them to the little smelt stream 
at Cold Spring Harbor. They are not first-class fish, 
but are good food, and that is what poor people want. 
Like the shad, they get their living in salt-water, and, 
therefore, do not compete with the fresh-water species. 
As food for people who want a cheap food this species 
should be cultivated where there are facilities for its 
breeding. Below Albany, N. Y., they com.e soon after 
the ice goes out and at first retail readily at 30 to 50 
cents per dozen. A month later, when they are plenty 
and are about to spawn, or have spawned, the price 
drops to 10 cents per dozen, and the farmers drive into 
the river where the shad fishermen are hauling seines 
and take home wagon loads for salting, buying them 
for a few cents per bushel. At least that was the rule 
when I was hatching shad on the Hudson, at Castleton, 
in 1874, and later. 



Adhesive Eggs. 245 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

STURGEON. 

This valuable food fish is in danger of extermination 
by being caught in the spawning season for its partly 
ripe eggs, which, owing to the demand for them when 
made into caviare, are worth more than the great fish 
itself. I am unfashionable enough to like sturgeon and 
to loathe caviare ; if there was a stronger word than 
loathe it would be used here. 

Once the Hudson River swarmed with this fish, and 
"Albany beef" was the common name of its flesh. Now 
they are practicalh^ gone from the river and the caviare 
hunters have gone to Lake of the Woods, north of 
^Minnesota, for the lake sturgeon, for there are two 
species. 

The sturgeon spawns in early summer, has heavy, 
adhesive eggs, measuring nine to the inch, which hatch 
in six to seven days. The eggs are difficult to take and 
in some cases the fish of both sexes have had to be 
ripped open, even when ripe. 



CHAPTER XXXHI. 

YELLOW PERCH {Pevca Uavescens) , 

This common pond and river fish is so near the 
European perch that the fish sharps have disputed over 



246 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

it for years. Jordan gives its range in America as 
''Minnesota to Northern Ohio and Quebec, south to 
South CaroHna, east of Alleghanies, not in Ohio Valley 
or Southwest; abundant." He also gives its length as 
fifteen inches. It is too common to describe. Is not 
found in Adirondack waters. The black stripes on 
yellow ground have given it the names of ringed perch 
and raccoon perch in some parts. It is a fair table fish, 
and if from muddy, weedy waters, should be skinned ; 
in fact, black bass are better when skinned. 

The eggs of this fish are unique. It is the first fish 
that I hatched and I find the following among my 
notes: ''April 20, 1868, while fishing a few miles below 
Albany, took and impregnated 10,000 spawn of the yel- 
low perch. The spawn comes in a long ribbon, or 
rather a cylindric one, double like a stocking leg, but 
with numerous wrinkles; the eggs are seen as bright 
spots the size of a pin head scattered through this mu- 
cous mass. The spawn was partly pressed and partly 
pulled from the fish and put into the old wash basin 
used as a boat bailer with water, and the milt from sev- 
eral males put with it. Took it to Albany in my dinner 
pail, and remembering that the aquarium at the State 
Geological Rooms was empty, I asked permission to 
use it for hatching, which request was kindly granted 
by Prof. Hall, Curator of the State Cabinet. Noticed 
life the third day; about 100 dead — all dead by May i, 
don't know why. 

"I found that this fish hung its spawn over twigs 
under water, and have found it often hung in the nets. 
Have often seen it hanging high and dry at least a foot 
out of water, where it was laid at a higher stage of the 
river. My spswn was hung on a twig near where the 
water entered the tank to insure a circulation. 



24S Modern Fishcutture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

*'May 2, took about 2opoo and put in same place; 
raised the curtain, but the sun did not strike the eggs; 




Ovary of Yellow Perch, with nearly ripe eggs, the forked 
extremity being the anterior part of the roe. 

life in two days. Some one let down the curtains and 
pushed down the strainer on the waste pipe; about 
two-thirds of the eggs went down the pipe (it was in 




Part of a Recently' Laid Mass of Yellow Perch Eggs. 
These cuts are from "A Manual of Fish Culture," ex- 
tracted from U. S. Fish Commission Report for 1897. 

three bunches), half the remainder dead, probably from 
handling, as I was informed that somebody lifted them 
out. The embryos are in constant motion in the egg — 



Adhesive Eggs. 249 

a regular beating movement like clockwork. In ten 
days from impregnation 1,000 hatched from the 3,000 
left, notwithstanding the eggs were often disturbed by 
visitors. Six days after hatching, the sac was absorbed, 
and I fed them clotted blood every day. My notes say : 
'In twenty days they had all disappeared down the 
waste pipe.' " 

The ice is scarcely out of the rivers before the perch 
begins to spawn, and in tide water millions of eggs per- 
ish by being left in the air at low tide, or after a freshet. 
The mass of eggs is often larger than the fish which laid 
them, after they have swollen, being sometimes five feet 
long. The only provision that can be made for their 
spawning is to put bushes in the water if there are none 
there. The eggs may then be gathered and hatched in 
any suitable water between 45° and 50° Fahr. 

I have since hatched yellow perch on Long Island; 
the water there was colder than that in Albany, and the 
hatching required a few days more. 



SECTION VI. 



PARASITES, DISEASES AND ENEMIES. 

There are thorns in the path of the fishculturist, who 
must be as vigilant as the farmer, manufactvirer or mer- 
chant in order to preserve the fruits of his labor. Out- 
side of human poachers, he must w^atch for the three 
plagues which are treated of in this section. By day 
and by night there are enemies working against him, as 
there are against the grower of fruit, grain, live stock 
or the man in other business. Eternal vigilance is the 
price of success in fishculture as well as in all other 
things. 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 



PARASITES. 



All living animals have internal and external para- 
sites, unless the parasites themselves are exceptions, 
which may be a matter of doubt, for an old rhyme 
gays : 

''So naturalists observe, a flea 
Has smaller fleas that on hirn prey; 
And these have smaller still to bite 'em- 
And so proceed, ad infinitum," 

g5Q 



Parasites, Diseases and Enemies. 251 



EXTERNAL PARASITES. 

A deadly parasite is the fungus which is called 
Saprolegnia fcrax by scientists, although the micro- 
scope shows variations which may be different species. 
Of this I am not qualified to speak. It appears to be 
nearly the same on the fish as on the tgg, a woolly or 
cottony growth. We often see it on dead flies in water, 
and the fact is that spores of this fungus are every- 
where in the water, only awaiting a suitable field to 
grow in, just as spores of mould in the air will find a 
good field in a pair of damp boots in a dark closet, 
while spores which fall on dry boots \n\\\ not germi- 
nate. An abrasion on the skin of a fish, a bruise or 
other injury, is an inviting field for fungus, but a clean 
cut does not seem to be so favorable for its growth. 

A favorite spot for this fungus to germinate is where 
the protecting slime has been removed from a fish, 
and this slime is readily removed by a dry hand, hence 
in the chapter on taking trout eggs I insist on the 
hands being wet before the trout is touched. It is not 
uncommon to find a dead fish with the print of a 
thumb on one side of its back and of the fingers on the 
other, where some kind angler has returned a fish to 
the water after handling it, in ignorance that he signed 
its death warrant when he touched it with a dry hand. 
You may take a fresh-water fish of any kind and lay it 
in a dry towel, smoothing the towel gently about it and 
then return the fish to the water, when it will swim off 
apparently unharmed ; about a week afterward the fish 
vv^ill appear to have a bloom, like that of a ripe purple 
grape or plum upon it, and then comes the "cottony 



252 Modern Fishcnlture in Fresh and Salt Water, 

growth/' and in ten days th.e fish will be dead, with 
great inflamed patches below the skin where the fungus 
has rooted into the flesh. 

In the first stages of this trouble the fungus can be 
killed by keeping the fish in salt water for a week or 
two, but when the roots penetrate below the skin and 
attack the muscle there is no remedy known at present. 
In the old New York Aquarium, Broadway and Thirty- 
fifth street, New York, 1876-79, I tried salicylic acid, 
borax, boracic acid and alum, separately and combined, 
with no effect on the mascalonge and other fishes in- 
jured in transit. The last three things named are dead- 
ly to fish if not carefully used, and I went so far as to 
bandage the fish and put it in a trough where it could 
not turn, and then apply the remedies behind its mouth 
and gills, saturating the bandage, but found nothing as 
good as salt and clean soil. By "clean soil" I mean 
earth from the country, and not city mud. All trout 
streams have more or less soil washed into them at 
times, even to rendering the water opaque, but it 
never injures trout, on the contrary it does them good 
in freeing them from external parasites. 

A formidable external parasite common to most 
fishes is the lamprey in its different species. These 
animals are often miscalled "lamper eels" and "lamprey 
eels," but they are not remotely related to the eel, or 
even in the class pices, which contain the fishes, where 
the eel is entitled to a place. They are in the class 
cyclostoini, and are nearer worms than fish, except that 
they have a soft backbone. Jordan, "Manual of the 
Vertebrates," says of them: "Skeleton cartilaginous; 
skull imperfect, not separate from vertebral column ; 
no jaws ; no limbs ; no ribs ; no shoulder girdle 
nor pelvic elements ; gills in the form of fixed sacs, six 



Parasites, Diseases and Enemies. 253 

or more on each side; nostril single median; mouth 
sub-inferior^ nearly circular, adapted for sucking; heart 
without arterial bulb ; alimentary canal straight, simple ; 
vei*tical fins with feeble rays. Naked eel-shaped ani- 
mals found in all cool waters." 

Yet when I testified in court as to the species of eels 
in our waters, I was followed by a man who claims to 
be an authority on fishes, who mentioned the 'hamper 
eel" as an eel. Jordan says: "They attach themselves 
to fisheSj and feed by scraping oiY the flesh with their 
rasp-hke teeth." An exhaustive and well illustrated 
paper on this subject may be found in the Bulletin of 
the United States Fish Commission, Volume XVII., 
1897, pages 209 to 215, by Prof. H. A. Surface, M. S., 
Fellow in Vertebrate Zoology, Cornell University, 
under the title of "The Lampreys of Central New 
York." The illustrations show the lampreys, and 
photos of pickerel, suckers and catfish with great holes 
in their sides, where they had been eaten. Lampreys 
have the habit of leeches. 

The same volume, pages 193, 199, contains an article 
entitled "An Economical Consideration of Fish Para- 
sites," by Dr. Edwin Linton, Ph. D., Professor of 
Biology, Washington and Jefferson College. The 
reader who wishes to pursue the subject further is rec- 
ommended to get the volume named. 

In 1886 J\Ir. C. Van Beuren, President Balsam Lake 
Club, Hardenburgh, Ulster County, N. Y., wrote me: 
"A number of trout have been caught in our lake with 
black spots on them. These spots are not very numer- 
ous, perhaps a dozen on one fish. They are on the 
back, sides, fins and tails, and they feel like shot under 
the skin. We have examined the spots under a micro- 
scope and find them, as viewed by the eye, to be 1-32 of 



254 Modern Fishculture'in Fresh and Salt Water. 

an inch. The microscope shows them to be a cell con- 
taining an Qgg with a living embryo. The ^gg is about 
1-200 of an inch in diameter. As they are on the fins 
they would seem to come from the outside. Those on 
the sides of the fish have the tgg apparently under the 
scales and attached to the skin by a thread-like ap- 
pendage which pulls out on removing the tgg. Is this 
a serious matter?" 

I have seen black bass, chubs, sunfish and other 
species well sprinkled with these spots in early sum- 
mer, and later in the season found worms in the flesh of 
the fishes, but they seemed to do no harm, even to 
people who ate the wormy fish. Somehow I connected 
the spots and the worms together, but never tried to 
work the thing out. I never saw them on trout. 



INTERNAL PARASITES. 

I took a tape-worm thirty-six inches long from a 
shiner, whose extreme length was 4:^ inches. The fish 
took my fly while trouting in the Adirondacks, and as 
it was so unnaturally plump it was opened. 

White intestinal thread-worms are often present in 
trout, and these worms pass from the intestines to the 
body cavity, and even through the air bladder, after the 
trout has been opened, but what they do before that 
can't be seen. 

Many parasites of fishes, like tape-worms, do not 
complete their existence in the fish, but their final host 
is some bird or mammal which eats the fish, just as the 
tape-worm of the hare becomes complete in the fox; 
that of the hog in man, etc. 

The trout of Yellowstone Lake are infested with 



Parasites, Diseases and Enemies. 255 

worms in their flesh. Dr. Leidy described this worm 
under the name of Dibothrium cordiceps. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

I 

DISEASES. 

Enghsh fishculturists, anglers and anatomists are 
greatly troubled by what they call the "salmon dis- 
ease." Prof. Huxley said of it: "At first small whitish 
patches appear on the skin. The smooth integument of 
the top of the head, or of the end of the snout, is a very 
usual locality, but the adipose fin and the axillse of the 
paired fins are also among the first parts to be affected. 
If there is an abraded or wounded surface, the disease 
is pretty sure to attack it, but the invasion of the mal- 
ady is in nowise dependent upon the pre-existence of 
an injury. ... In the scaleless parts of the skin, 
sloughing soon sets in and deep burrowing sores are 
formed. ... If the flufTfy, whitish coat which is so 
characteristic of the diseased skin — and is sometimes 
tenacious enough to be stripped ofif in flakes like wet 
paper — is examined microscopically, it is seen to con- 
sist chiefly of a tangled mass of fine filaments on an 
average about 1-2,000 of an inch in diameter, which 
are at once recognizable as the stems (or hyphse, as 
they are technically called) of a fungus, Saprolegnia 
ferax, similar to those known as moulds." 

Prof. Huxley further says: "These observations 
left no doubt in my mind that the Saprolegnia is the 



256 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

cause and not a mere accompaniment of the salmon 
disease." I have treated of this in the preceding chap- 
ter. Prof. Huxley thus sums up the present state of 
our knowledge respecting the salmon disease : 

''i. The sole cause of the disease is the fungus 
Saprolegnia /^ra,i'_, which burrows in and destroys the 
skin of the fish. 

*'2. This fungus habitually lives on dead organic 
matter, and only lives in fresh water." 

3 and 4 give the mode of propagation of the fungus. 

"5. It follows, therefore, that the existence of the 
cause of salmon disease, or to speak more generally, of 
the integumentary mycosis of fresh-water fishes, is in- 
dependent of the existence of fishes; and consequently 
that the extirpation of all the diseased fish in a river 
does not involve the extirpation of the cause of the dis- 
ease in that river. 

"6. There is reason to believe that the Saprolegnia 
exists in its saprophytic form in most fresh waters, 
and that it attacks the fish of most rivers occasionally. 
In other words, the mycosis of fresh-water fishes is a 
widespread sporadic disease. 

''y. That which it is now desirable to ascertain is the 
nature of the influences under which the sporadic dis- 
ease suddenly assumes an epidemic character. On 
this point we have very little light at present, for al- 
though there is some reason for thinking that deficient 
oxygenation, whether produced by overcrowding or 
otherwise, may favor the development of the disease, 
and though it is possible that some kinds of pollution 
may favor it, yet the disease sometimes becomes epi- 
demic under conditions in which these two predispos- 
ing causes are excluded; and it does not always appear 
when they are present. 



Parasites, Diseases and Enemies. 257 

"8. Epidemics subside spontaneously, though the 
fish rertiain in fresh water. 

"9. The productiveness of a salmon river is not nec- 
essarily interfered with by even a violent epidemic. 

*The last three propositions indicate the moral of 
my paper — which is to make sure that you know what 
you are about before meddling with the salmon dis- 
ease. Until the causes which convert the sporadic into 
the epidemic disease are known, all interference is mere 
groping in the dark ; and when they are known, it will 
be a great question whether the preventive measures 
adopted are worth their cost. 

'Tishery doctors at the present day remind me of hu- 
man doctors in my youth — they were always for doing 
something. I remem'ier one of my teachers laid down 
the notable maxim, 'when you are in doubt, play a 
trump,' and I should think that those of us who have 
followed this advice, in the last fifty years, must have 
largely added to the bills of mortality. Our fishery 
doctors are of the same mind as my friend. They are — 
or at any rate ought to be — very much in doubt, and 
yet they continually want to play trumps in the shape 
of stringent regulations and restrictions. If I might 
tender a piece of advice, I would say — don't." 

After quoting Huxley I can't help asking: If the 
fungus (2) only lives on dead organic matter why it 
attacks the living tissues of fish? 



A DEAD HORSE. 

Years ago a man asked me to come and see what 
was the trouble with his trout and eggs. As he put it : 
'There was wool growing all over them." I told him 



258 Modern Pishcultiire in Presh and Salt Water, 

that I would not promise to find the trouble, and inti- 
mated that my honorarium would be $25 and expenses 
for an inspection. He agreed. His fish were in bad 
shape; he had hatched trout successfully the winter be- 
fore and now fungus attacked every dead tgg before it 
had been dead half a day. I tasted the water, but 
learned nothing from that; looked over the ponds and 
their inlets without finding anything wrong, and to all 
his questions merely replied that so far there was no 
visible cause for the trouble. We went to dinner and I 
was too worried to eat much. Perhaps this man, whom 
I had never met before, thought me a fraud, and while 
my time was valuable to me, I resolved that I would 
not take his money if I could do him no good. After 
dinner I proposed a trip to the springs at the head of 
his little stream. There was a marshy piece of wood- 
land, and in rubber boots we went into it. There, 
draining into his ponds, was a horse which had died 
three months before. My advice was : "Haul that 
horse out and bury it where no water from it will flow 
into your springs. Get a barrel of quicklime and cover 
the spot where he lies and also over all the space you 
may drag him where the surface water may flow into 
your springs." 

He looked astonished and said : "Quicklime will 
kill trout, and if I do that they will all die. How 
does that horse, which died last fall, make my trout 
woolly?" 

I told him about the "woolly" growth from dead ani- 
mal matter and explained that quicklime only killed 
trout because it was "quick," and that well-slacked lime 
would not hurt his fish, and that his barrel of lime 
would be very dead before it trickled through the 
swamp to his ponds, but would at once kill all the 



Parasites, Diseases and Enemies. 259 

'Svoolly germs." He followed the "prescription" and 
was so well pleased that he sent for me twice again for 
professional advice — and there is nothing which the am- 
ateur fishcnlturist thinks he needs less than professional 
advice. He seems to think that because he is a lover of 
trout or an angler he has been especially endowed with 
a capacity for the business and can go ahead on 
some original plan. He makes expensive mistakes and 
learns in that very dear school. It is a singular thing 
that a man who shoots and fishes a little thinks h^ 
knows more of these things than an old woodsman, 
and flatters himself that he has the best gun ever made 
and the best dog ever whelped, and that he is a Darjiel 
Boone, Davy Crockett and Natty Bumpo condensed 
into one. This is a comfortable and satisfactory belief, 
but exceedingly expensive when he goes unaided into 
fishculture, and I speak from a memory of many costly 
failures when there was no one to instruct. The advice 
of Huxley is excellent and bears out what has been 
said in previous chapters. 



FISH THAT DIE AFTER SPAWNING. 

The salmon fishermen of our western coast believe 
that their species of salmon spawn but once and die. 
Some shad fishermen on the Hudson River have the 
same belief. Because a great majority die, and on the 
Pacific coast line the shores with their dead, they be- 
lieve that all die after spawning. I don't believe any 
such thing. Spawning salmon of from seventy to one 
hundred pounds have been taken in our rivers empty- 
ing into the Pacific, and it is difficult to believe that 
this was their first trip to the spawning grounds. A 



26o Modern Fishcultiirc in Fresh and Salt Water. 

shad will have the nuclei of several successive spawn- 
ing seasons behind the eggs to be laid when . she is 
caught, and it taxes our credulity to believe th t these 
are not to be used. Our domestic fowls show luclei 
for many settings of eggs ; and there the case rests, as 
lawyers say. 

AN EPIDEMIC. 

One year I had an epidemic among the trout at Cold 
Spring Harbor, N. Y. Great sores appeared on the 
trout and they died by the hundred every day. The 
Biological Section of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts 
and Sciences had a summer laboratory there^ with stu- 
dents from many parts of the country, and they took 
the dead fish for study. It worried me into loss of ap- 
petite and sleep to see from fifty to a hundred great 
brook and brown trout, from one to five pounds weight, 
laid out in the "morgue" every morning for burial, with 
no idea of the cause of their death. The scientists could 
make nothing of it, and it was not the fungus called 
Saprolegnia. There was merely a cancer-like sore 
with broken-down tissue which flowed out of the sores 
in a pinkish fluid, and that was all. 

After a careful investigation I found that some beef 
livers which came from New York were affected with 
tuberculosis. I had forbidden the use of any livers 
which appeared to be diseased, and a year or two be- 
fore had entertained the idea of complaining to the 
Board of Health about the tuberculous beef which was 
being slaughtered, but at that time the problem was. 
where to get good livers. I finally contracted with a 
Mr. Abrams to furnish livers that were sound, and 
after that the disease disappeared. It was not possible 



Parasites, Diseases and Enemies. 261 

for me to inspect every box of livers which came from 
New York daily, and in my report to the New York 
Fish Commission for the year I was at a loss to account 
for the mortality. 

The following circular was issued by me to trout 
breeders : 

"My Dear Sir: During the summer of 1890, a dis- 
ease which was new to me appeared among the trout 
in the State ponds under my charge. Both brook and 
brown trout, large and small, died in great numbers, 
especially the larger ones of from two to four pounds. 
I have learned that this was epidemic on Long Island, 
and in portions of New Jersey, and wish to trace its 
range, hence this circular is addressed to you in the 
hope of learning more of its ravages. 

"There was no appearance of fungus of the cottony 
sort, which follows an injury to the skin, with which 
we are all familiar. The first indication of the disease 
was a white spot, usually on the side, above or near the 
anus, of perhaps an inch in diameter. Within ten days 
a hole would appear in this and shortly afterward the 
fish would die. Then it would appear that under the 
skin a patch of dead and decomposed tissue was found, 
three to four inches long by one to two inches wide, 
and on the slightest pressure this would spurt out a 
dark fluid. Under the microscope only broken-down 
tissue in a state of partial fluidity, with blood corpus- 
cles, could be seen. To my unprofessional eye it more 
nearly resembled a severe case of Epithelioma, or skin 
cancer, which I once saw on a man. The disease ap- 
peared in May and continued into August, but as noth- 
ing was to be gained by letting the matter get into the 
newspapers it was kept quiet. 



262 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

"1 now wish to mention this epidemic in my next 
reports to the State and to the United States Fish Com- 
missions, and will feel obliged if you can give any in- 
formation concerning it; its character, time of appear- 
ance and departure, and extent of territory over which 
it extended, with the privilege of using your reply for 
publication over your name. I can say that during an 
experience in fishculture covering nearly a quarter of a 
century no such disease among fishes has been ob- 
served by me, nor has it been recorded by others, to 
my knowledge. 

^'Believing that our combined experience may possi- 
bly be of future use, anything which you may say on 
this subject, if such a thing has ever been brought to 
your notice, will be of value. 

"Very respectfully yours, 

"Fred Mather/' 

Dr. Bashford Dean and Dr. Stratford, of Columbia 
College, and several other men eminent in the study 
of animals in health and disease had never seen nor 
heard of anything like it. Prof. H. W. Conn, of the 
Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn., thought 
that it was caused by bacteria. These forms were pres- 
ent, as they always are in diseased tissue, but whether 
they were the primary cause or not Prof. Conn did not 
care to say. 

Our ponds were clean, and as there is no chance for 
pollution above us, the cause was to be looked for be- 
yond foul water. Sometimes a trout would be sudden- 
ly seized with a spasm, or giddiness, and would rush 
about on its side without seeming to know where it 
was going, and this, with the questions of summer vis- 
itors, who asked to know what I could not tell them. 



Parasites, Diseases and Enemies. 263 

made me wish that there was a wall about the place thai 
even I could not get over. My orders were not to let a 
visitor see a dead fish ; but the fish would die in their 
sight, and one dead fish is more interesting to a visitor 
than a thousand live ones, for it affords a chance for 
questions that no man can answer. 

Even in a hatching trough thirty thousand live and 
healthy fish will not be noticed by a visitor if a dead 
one is to be seen. A statement that out of the same 
number of pigs, colts, chickens or children the death 
rate would be as great, if not greater, brings it squarely 
to them ; but during the epidemic, when a dozen or more 
large fish were seen belly up, there was only one thing 
to do, and that was to have a man to keep visitors in- 
terested elsewhere while the dead were being taken out 
and buried. 

Although the loss was not, pecuniarily speaking, a 
personal one to me, yet no man ever felt more disap- 
pointed at seeing the results of his labor swept away 
than I did. My long experience in fishculture fur- 
nished no antidote to counteract the poison that was 
more than decimatmg the stock which I had carefully 
reared, and on which my professional reputation hung. 
Many a time a husky voice belied an assumed indif- 
ference as I told a man to ''bury 'em in the geranium 
bed, 'twill make 'em bloom in the fall," but at night 
the question, "Is this station which I selected and have 
tried to build up a failure?" was annoying beyond ex- 
pression. 

During the summer of 1891 only one fish manifested 
any sign of this disease, and it was buried in July. The 
summer was an exceedingly good one for both fry and 
adult fish, and the losses in each class were small. 

From many answers received in 1891, I quote the 



264 Modern Fishciilture in Fresh and Salt Watef. 

following, which show where the disease was un- 
known : 

''Never had in our State hatcheries any epidemic ex- 
cept among fish less than six months old." — C. S. 
White, Fish Commissioner of West Virginia. 

"We had no disease at the South Side Club, such as 
you describe last year. Our large trout were remark- 
ably healthy. The great loss in old fish is during and 
after the spawning season ; not only those suffering 
from fungus on wounds received in fighting, but many 
seem to have died from no apparent cause. In the win- 
ter of 1889-90 the loss was heavier than ever before. 
This season it was light." — Roland Redmond, Presi- 
dent South Side Sportsman's Club. * 

Neither was the disease observed at Eastport, L. I., 
according to Dr. H. G. Preston, President of the Ox- 
ford Rod and Gun Club, in the ponds of the club at that 
place, some thirty miles east of the South Side Club. 

The following persons have seen more or less of this 
epidemic, or one similar to it : 

''While I was an employee of the State Hatchery at 
Caledonia, N. Y., in 1883 or 1884, the large trout died 
off by hundreds in the summer, with a disease, I should 
say, similar to the one that you mention. It could not 
have been the common fungus, which is usually caused 
by an injury to the skin. I used to pick out the trout 
every morning, or assist in doing so, and I believe that 
if not the same disease, it is closely allied to the one of 
which you speak, and I noticed that there was consid- 
erable dark fluid oozing from many of them." — John 
G. Roberts, Supt. Adirondack Station N. Y. Fish Com- 
mission. 

* This club is at Oakdale, on the south side of Long Island, 
and distant from our ponds, on the north side, about twenty- 
five miles in a direct line. F. M. 



Parasites, Diseases and Enemies. 26^ 

Mr. E. F. Boehm, now Superintendent of the State 
hatchery at Newton's Corners, N. Y., was in the Cale- 
donia hatchery with Mr. Roberts, and writes prac- 
tically the same thing. 

"Six years ago, about the same disease appeared 
among my trout from April to July. In June they died 
in great numbers, from twenty-five to thirty every 
night, and I was discouraged. One day I saw that a 
great many more would die and thought that the cause 
might be from feeding stale beef hearts. I stopped 
feeding for ten days and then began giving them live 
minnows, and in a week's time the mortality stopped 
and I have lost very few trout since." — Albert Rackow, 
Elmont. L. I. 

That there are occasional epidemics among fish is a 
fact familiar to all who have had much experience with 
them, and the cause is not at all understood. In the 
summer of 1850 or 185 1 the perch and pickerel m 
Kinderhook Lake, Rensselaer County, N. Y., died in 
great numbers and came in shore to die; some boys 
who had walked down to the lake from Albany with 
me refused to fish or touch the fish that -were strug- 
gling near the shore, we believing that they had been 
poisoned. In 1856 I saw thoifsands of black bass dead 
upon the shores of the small lakes along the Mississippi 
River, near Potosi, Wisconsin. Some lakes in Central 
New York — Hemlock, Honeoye and Canadice Lakes 
— had an epidemic that killed many perch in the sum- 
mer of 1870. In 1883, St. John's Lake, at Cold Spring 
Harbor, N. Y., had a disease which killed the sunfish 
in such numbers that the air was tainted. Greenwood 
Lake, lying partly in New York and in New Jersey, 
has been visited by a similar epidemic, although I can- 
not give the years. 



266 Modern FishciilUire in Fresh and Salt Water. 

To further prove that these things are beyond the 
knowledge and control of man, and also to show that 
they are not confined to fresh water, I will cite : With- 
in ten years, more or less, the United States Fish Com- 
mission discovered a new and valuable food fish by 
methods not pursued by the commercial fishermen on 
the New England coast. The fish had no common 
name, of course, and as the scientists had christened it 
by the pretty and simple name of Lopholatilus chamce- 
Iconticeps, and as it was evident that the marketman 
and the club steward might not grasp the full mean- 
ing of all the syllables, the last one in its front name 
was shortened and it bloomed upon the market as the 
"tile fish." 

It had hardly got in favor with the New York and 
Boston hotels when reports from ship captains came in 
that they had sailed through miles of strange fish float- 
ing dead upon the water. This was about 1884, and 
not a single fish of this species was taken until 1898. 
It was believed that they had been exterminated by 
some submarine disturbances, but our later reports 
show that enough escaped the catastrophe to perpet- 
uate the species. It is a valuable food fish, but one 
which, by its deep water habitat, escaped our fishermen 
until the Fish Commission found it by fishing beyond 
the banks, where the hardy cod fishers do not go. It 
is now increasing in numbers. 

Cases of mortality among fishes might be extended, 
it being well known that in Lake Ontario some of the 
smaller "lake herring" die ofT yearly in great numbers, 
a fact about which we have nothing to base an opinion. 

The following is from a recent New York paper: 

"Port Jervis, N. Y., May 18, 1898.— The shores of 
Monhagen and Highland lakes, near Middletown, are 



Parasites, Diseases and Enemies. 26} 

lined with thousands of fish, mostly dead catfish. Men 
have been engaged for three days in removing them, 
but are making no headway. As they clear a patch, it 
is covered again with dead fish washed to shore. Hun- 
dreds of wagon loads have been removed in this man- 
ner. The bass with which the lakes were stocked a 
few years ago do not appear to be affected. A similar 
phenomenon was experienced in Green's Basin, north 
of here, a few weeks ago. No explanation of the oc- 
currence can be had." 

Summing all this up, there seems to be no way of 
preventing disease, whether sporadic or epidemic, 
among fish, except to keep the ponds clean if they 
are densely populated and to treat cases of fungus with 
salt water, w^iere possible, and to remove every in- 
fected fish at once. 

Most other diseases of trout in ponds, such as bhnd- 
ness, the turning in of the flap of the gill cover, where it 
grows fast, exposing the gill, are not common enough 
to warrant seeking a remedy. In blindness there is no 
hope for improvement, and as a gill cover once turned 
in and grown fast refuses to be straightened out, it 
mav be well to let it be as it is.* 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 

ENEMIES. 



As it would require a volume to tell of the enemies of 
salt-water fishes— which, by the way, are mostly other 
species of fish, and the marine mamm als — this chapter 

* See chapter xliii on the working, or blooming, of ponds. 



268 Modern Fishcnlture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

will merely glance at such forms of life as prey on the 
fish of rivers, lakes and streams. 



FISH. 

Large trout are usually cannibals, and in private 
ponds should not be allowed to live. I have seen a 
trout try to swallow one that was so near its own size 
that it could not pouch it and it swam about all day 
with a portion of the tail and caudal fin — they are not 
the same — protruding from its jaws. Such fellows I 
always netted out, or speared, for once they begin the 
habit they never stop it, and they will devour many 
times their own weight in a month. 

A small fish known as miller's thumb, blob, muffle 
jaw, and star-gazer, belonging to the genus Cottus, or 
Uranidea, for they shift the names occasionally, is 
called bullhead in England. It is a homely, big-headed 
little thing, and Jordan records nine species, from three 
to five inches long, one species reaching seven inches. 
They are found in the Great Lakes, rivers and streams 
from Lake Superior to Georgia. They lie on the bot- 
tom or under stones and move after the manner of the 
darters. This fresh-water sculpin is one of the natural 
checks on the overproduction of trout and salmon. It 
eats the eggs and the young fish. It is found in all 
trout waters as far as examined. It is very destructive. 
At an experiment once made in the aquarium of the 
United States Fish Commission, in Washington, a 
miller's thumb about 4^ inches long ate at a single 
meal, and all within a minute or two, twenty-two little 
trout, each from three-quarters of an inch to an inch in 
length. 



Parasites, Diseases and Enemies. 269 

Most fish will eat smaller ones, if we except the stur- 
geons, the whitefishes, suckers, carp and goldfish, and 
these will eat fish eggs. The pikes eat nothing but fish, 
and we have five species of them, while Europe has but 
one. Eels are very destructive. 

REPTILES AND BATRACHIANS. 

Most of these eat fish to a greater or less extent. The 
water-snakes, garter-snakes and the black-snake eat 
fish, and perhaps other species may also eat them. All 
the snapping turtles, pond and river turtles eat fish. 
The little land tortoises called "box turtles" may take 
insects, but will not eat fish. I have kept them for 
years, and their food, as far as I could observe, was 
vegetable. Those large salamander-like forms all eat 
fish. They are the "mud eel" (Siren laeertina), thirty- 
six inches. Northern Indiana to North Carolina and 
south; the proteus, mud puppy, water dog {Nectiirns 
maculatiis), called ''lizard" in the Detroit River, twenty- 
four inches, Eastern United States, chiefly north and 
west of the Alleghanies; this animal has its gills outside 
its head ; I have eaten this beast. The hellbender (Cryp- 
tohranchus alleghaniensis), twenty-four inches, Ohio 
valley and south, lives largely on small fish. The ranges 
and lengths given are from Jordan's "Manual of the 
Vertebrates." 

Frogs, especially the large ones, eat fish, and I once 
took from one a young snapping turtle, about an inch 
(2^ cm.) in diameter. The toad frequents the water at 
times but does not eat fish. 

The frog is popularly supposed to spend its time in 
summer in rendering Wagnerian operas and catching 



2/0 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

insects, but I have taken from its maw small frogs and 
fish. Once, while fishing in the Adirondacks with 
''Jack" Sheppard, the guide, a great bullfrog plunked 
in the water and soon climbed the log again, swallow- 
ing something. 

"That fellow's got a fish," said Jack. 

"Don't believe it. His splash would scare a fish, and 



Hellbenders {Cryptohranchus alleghaniensis). 

lie can't swim fast enough to catch a fish. Let's catch 
him and see." 

"For the cigars at Bennett's?" 

"For the cigars. He never got a fish in that short 
time, after that plunk." 

Jack reeled in his line until it was about the length 
of the rod, while I slowly paddled and drifted up to the 
batrachian. Jack swung the fiy above his nose, and he 



Parasites, Diseases and Enemies. 271 

was our frog. "Make it half a dozen cigars?" Jack 
asked. 

"All right; make it a round dozen." 

I had on a previous day remonstrated with Jack 
about not killing a frog before he cut it in two and 
skinned the legs; the sight of the living portion an- 
noyed me, and as he was my guide I forbade the prac- 
tice. He unhooked the frog and handed it to me. A 
blow on the head with a heavy knife-handle and a cut 
into the brain stopped all feeling, and then he opened 
his inner works, and there was a little sunfish, about 
two inches long. 

"Jack," I remarked, "you've won; but as you were 
booked to win in any event, as I buy the cigars every 
night, you have not won much. I am the real win- 
ner, because I have learned something. Now let's not 
waste this fellow, but stop trouting and get frogs 
enough for breakfast. How did that frog catch that 
fish? That's what I want to know." 

Jack tossed the little fish overboard and merely re- 
marked: "It's funny how they do it, but they do." 

"Jack Sheppard, I asked you a plain question that 
should have a straight answer, and all I get is the re- 
frain of a music hall song. How did the frog catch 
that fish? Did it catch it when it made the dive from 
the log, or did the frog dive to the bottom and come up 
under the fish? That's the question." 

Jack threw the skin of the legs overboard and fol- 
lowed it with the body of the frog, laid some fresh grass 
over the trout in the creel, placed the legs on the grass, 
looked up and remarked: "I'll be durned if I know." * 

Water Snakes. — Few sportsmen know more about 

* This and some other anecdotes in this chapter were orig- 
inally written by me for Forest and Stream, F. M- 



2']2 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

snakes than to have about half a dozen names to cover 
them all, and few men see more snakes than the men who 
fish and shoot, yet Jordan ("Manual of the Vertebrates") 
gives us twenty-four genera and fifty-three species in the 
northern United States. Of these there are four which 
haunt marshy places and feed mainly on fish and frogs, 
although none of them would neglect a bird if it 
offered, whether the bird was nesting on the ground or 
feeding. And the other species may also take fish, for 
all I know, while it is sure that none of them would 
decline a frog. 

These four piscivorous serpents have come fre- 
quently under my notice at times when I have been 
fishing alone from a boat or a log as a "contemplative 
angler." That is the w^ay to see not only snakes, but 
other life, and I have fished with the four fish eaters 
and have seen them fish. I do not kill all snakes; in 
fact, I love to pet the ''pufif-adder," or ''hog-nosed 
viper," for it is kind and likes petting; it is not poison- 
ous, as the majority say it is, but it flattens its head and 
threatens, then I pick it up and we are friends. But 
the *'four," the "big four," and we might add, "the 
dirty four," I kill them on sight. Two of them are as 
poisonous as the rattlesnake, and the others are vile 
beasts. 

The common water snake of the North (Tropidonotus 
sipcdon) grows to a length of four feet. It is of a dirty 
brown color, with darker squares. It ranges from 
Maine to Texas, and is found along the streams, a 
cross, disagreeable reptile. From 1868 to 1876 I had 
trout ponds at Honeoye Falls, Monroe county, N. Y., 
and this snake was a pest. The soil was a stiff clay, and 
a crawfish hole would never cave in, but^made a good 
place for Tropidonotus sipedon to hide in. On approach- 



Parasites, Diseases and Enemies. 2y^ 

ing the ponds in summer there would be many of these 
snakes seen to dodge into the water and hide under 
the overhanging grass. It was fun to see lady visitors 
screech when I threw ofif my cOat and plunged the left 
arm under the bank, bringing out the angry beast, 
which, if not taken too near the neck, vented its wrath 
in sinking its teeth into my hand. But it was only like 
a brier scratch; not half as severe afterward as the 
prick from the spine of a catfish, but when my good 
right hand took the reptile by the head and twisted it 
from its body, some people thought it cruel. To me it 
was ''cruel" to see a snake take a trout, especially one 
that I had raised. Yet that snake filled its place in 
nature; the main trouble is that man writes up all these 
things from his point of view, just as I am doing. 

The other non-poisonous water snake which I know, 
although others are recorded, is the Southern one (T. 
fasciatiis), which has dark vertical bands on its sides, 
and has a reddish-brown belly. This snake is seldom 
found north of Georgia. I knew it quite well, having 
looked it over for poison fangs and found it to be harm- 
less, so when a lady from Ponchitoula landed one and 
was about to spring out of the boat, I called to her 
to swing it over to me. She did so, and I was tempted 
to bite the animal's head ofif, just for bravado, but 
merely unhooked it and killed it with my heel. 

The Northern sportsmen should remember this: 
Our North American poisonous serpents have trian- 
gular heads and also have a deep pit between the eye 
and the nostril, like a second nostril. The snake known 
as a copperhead in the North and cottonmouth in the 
South {Ancistrodon contortrix) has the top of its head a 
coppery-red. and a lot of V-shaped blotches on its back. 
If I am not mistaken, it is called ''pilot" and "rattle- 



274 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

snake's mate" in Pennsylvania. It is very poisonous, 
but is not as common as it was. While fishing for black 
bass in the Delaware River, one crawled out of the 
water with a perch in its mouth so near me that I killed 
it with a stone. 

From Illinois south dwells the water moccasin {A. 
pisck'orus), said by Jordan to be the most dangerous of 
our snakes. I have seen them hanging on bushes over 
the water ready for fish or frog, and have killed several 
that had fish in them. When fishing in Southern waters 
I keep a good lookout for these animals, which give no 
warning rattle, but carry small doses of sudden death 
ready to be injected into the leg of a peaceful angler. 

Tortoises and Turtles. — In America we popularly 
call them all "turtles," and the distinction of "tortoise" 
for the land and fresh- water kind is almost unknown, 
while the principal exception is that delicate box of gela- 
tinous meat, the diamond-back terrapin of the salt-water 
marshes. I never knew the box tortoise to eat fish, and 
I have had them in captivity for years ; they seemed 
fond of fruits, melons and tomatoes. 

All the pond and river turtles are great fish eaters. 
They will float up quietly under a fish and make a grab 
for it. Some years ago I was using a live minnow for 
black bass, on Long Island, when I saw a great snap- 
ping turtle take the minnow and go below. A few pulls 
showed that a trout rod would never stir a thirty-pound 
turtle from the mud and weeds, and I kept weaving 
the rod from side to side in order to cut the snell on 
the reptile's jaw, in order not to lose the entire leader. 
The game worked, and a hook was the only loss. I 
have taken these brutes on night lines set for eels, but 
there were hooks selected for that work, and no gut 
snells. 



Parasites, Diseases and Enemies. 275 

The large, soft-shelled turtles of the Great Lake re- 
gion and the South are also savage fellows. A young 
man who was fishing near me in the Pamunky River, 
and using strong tackle, pulled in one of these critters 
and held it up to show me. Soon he yelled for help, 
and I rowed over to him and found the turtle fast to 
his shoe and biting his foot. He was in too much agony 
to help himself, and I did not know what to do. The 
first impulse was to seize the long neck and shut off the 
turtle's wind; as I did this I realized that it could do 
without breathing for an hour or two, and all the while 
the man was in agony with the cruel beak forcing itself 
through the thin upper of his shoe and into his foot. 
On the seat beyond him lay one of those strong dirk- 
knives which are sold to would-be sportsmen as "hunt- 
ing knives." Fortunately it was sharp, as well as 
strong, and the way I vivisected the lower jaw out of 
that turtle took ?'.l my strength, and would have won 
applause from the cruelty society. The young man 
fainted at the finish, but a little water and fanning 
brought him around. When his shoe was removed 
there was much blood in it, and on taking of¥ his stock- 
ing I found that the little toe was nearly severed, and 
the next one was injured. I bound up his foot in his 
handkerchief and towed his boat to White House land- 
ing, where he had friends. He lost one toe, however. 
He said that the turtle had swallowed the hook, and 
he had cut the line to let him have it, when the turtle 
began running around to escape, and he kicked at it. 
"Weiy said 1, "you keep that hunting knife as a re- 
minder, not only of the loss of your toe, but as the first 
instance known where such a knife was found to be 
useful/' 

Passhig from turtles, which are truly dangerous. 



5^6 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Watev. 

down to the little *'skillypots" which sun themselves 
on logs, is like descending from tiger hunting to shoot- 
ing rabbits. The turtles before mentioned never sun 
themselves on logs. They may float on the water a 
few minutes when they come up for air, but they re- 
main in the water at all times, except when eggs are 
to be laid on land for the sun to hatch. Here is a grand 
division not noticed in the books. From the big "slid- 
ers" of the South to the painted and spotted pond tur- 
tles of the North, they are all fish eaters. 

Birds. — All ducks eat some small fish occasionally, 
and some birds live almost exclusively upon them. These 
are the grebes, helldivers, loons, gannets, pelicans, cor- 
morants, the mergensers or sheldrakes, herons (often 
miscalled "cranes"), bald eagle, osprey or "fish-hawk," 
and kingfisher. The gulls eat fish, or any other thing 
that comes handy, but as they are not divers it is only 
the dead or injured fish that come to the surface ^i^hich 
they can get. 

The Kingfisher. — This jolly bird is common every- 
where, whether up some little trout stream, which the 
angler has just discovered, but which the kingfisher 
knew years before, or along the rocks and beaches of 
old ocean, where it seeks its prey among the breakers. 
There is no bit of fresh or salt water on this continent 
that the kingfisher does not frequent and where its 
cheery whir, like the song of the reel, is not heard. Every 
youthful angler saw one on his first fishing trip, and 
also learned its name, which fortunately is the same 
from Florida to Alaska. The Germans call it the icebird 
{Eisvogel), and the name seems inappropriate, al- 
though it often remains all winter along the northern 
coast, near open waters. 

Once I cast a minnow for black bass, and some fish 



Parasites, Diseases and Enemies. 2yy 

struck at it and knocked the bait on top of a lily pad. 
A passing kingfisher saw it, stopped, hovered and dove. 
The bird stpuck the water hard just as the minnow 
floundered into it, and bore the fish some feet in the 
air until it learned that its prey was fast to something, 
when the bird dropped the fish and alighted on a dead 
limb and scolded away. In fact it always scolds when 
it misses, and I have been in doubt whether it can 
spring its rattle with a fish in its bill. By the marks on 
this minnow the long bill of the bird did not pierce it, 
but it struck the fish about the middle, leaving a mark 
on each side. 

The kingfisher sizes up its prey and does not take a 
fish which it cannot swallow whole. It takes the fish 
head first, after it has seized it crosswise and gone to a 
limb to swallow it. This I have learned by dissection, 
for as a fishculturist I was forced to protect my trout 
fry from a bird which has always been a welcome com- 
panion on angling trips. 

The kingfishers nest in holes in the bank, usually 
under the protecting roots of trees, and the young seem 
to be able to reject fish bones, or to pass them undi- 
gested, I don't know which. Nor do I know how th^ 
young are fed. whether as pigeons are fed, or whether 
the old takes a fish to the nest and picks it to pieces for 
the fledglings. In fact, there are many things which 
w^e may never know of the life history of wild birds, 
because we cannot be allowed to intrude upon their 
privacy. 

The Osprey. — This is a large bird of the great fam- 
ily of falcons, which includes the eagles, hawks and 
kites. Osprey is the correct name of the bird, which is 
called "fish-hawk" in many parts of our country, and 
not without reason. It ranges almost over the world. 



278 Modern Pishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

and is not confined to America. This fact, in combina- 
tion with the other fact that the name "osprey" is more 
universal than "fish-hawk/' leads me to use the name 
which is wider known, even if not so descriptive. 

Did you ever watch a kingfisher hover at fifty feet, 
dive and strike its prey ; or an osprey do the same thing 
to a larger fish at three times the distance ? If you have 
done this, and have seen these birds take their fish in 
from one to three feet of water, you may have wondered 
at it in an indolent sort of way, and have gone on 
fishing. 

Stop here and think! Put your hand a foot above 
the water and try to grab a fish that is just below the 
surface and you will fail. Then consider what the king- 
fisher and the osprey do at the heights at which they 
dive, and make a good living at it, and you will marvel 
how the birds do it with repeated success, while you 
can never catch even a little minnow in your hand. 

The osprey can sail in circles, like all of its class, but 
it often flies in a direct line, with head bent down to 
scan the waters below. When it sees a fish of the de- 
sired size or kind, it hovers, as the kingfisher does, and 
then like an arrow it dives, and rarely misses. Unlike 
the kingfisher, it emerges from the water with the fish 
in its powerful talons, and not in its bill, and then wings 
its way into the woods to feast, or to feed its young. 



A PLANT. 

A water plant called "bladderwort" has a reputation 
for capturing small fish and feeding on them, as the 
pitcher plants feed on insects which venture into their 
parlors after the sweet juices held there. I had read 



Parasites, Diseases and Enemies. 279 

something of this plant in the report of the United 
States Fish Commission for 1884-5, but did not know 
it. Late in July, 1889, I was ordered by Mr. E. G. 
Blackford, President of the New York Fish Commis- 
sion, to make an examination of the two principal lakes 
of Long Island, at Ronkonkoma and Riverhead, and 
Dr. Bashford^. Dean of Columbia University, volun- 
teered to assist, I to work up fishes and crustaceans, 
and he to do the same for plants and insects. A full 
report of our work may be found in the report of the 
State Commission for 1889. 

When Dr. Dean showed me the plant it was well 
known by sight, but the idea of those little bladders, 
one-sixteenth of an inch long, destroying a fish seemed 
absurd. Dr. Dean did not have to go far to study the 
plant. Three varieties — the Utricularia vulgaris, Pinior 
and Purpurea — were found in the Long Island ponds 
in quantity and under natural conditions. The plant 
is found in rope-like masses growing from a big round 
bud. It is more or less floating, and dies at one end 
as it grows at the other. In the winter the stem dies 
up to the terminal bud. It blooms in June in Long 
Island waters, its yellow clusters of flowers reaching 
up above the surface of the water. The leaves are deli- 
cate and fringe the stem. From their axils arise the 
bladders. From its small size I am skeptical about its 
taking any fish. 

INSECTS AND THEIR LARV^. 

"While furnishing food for trout, as well as other 
fishes, there are some species of insects which turn the 
tables and kill the trout. A flat beetle (Belostoma gran- 
dts) grows to a length of two inches, and will attack a 



28o Modern Fishciilturc in Fresh and Salt Water. 

yearling trout. It has swimming legs behind, power- 
ful forelegs, a boat-shaped body and a sharp probos- 
cis; the larva of this beetle is a green worm the size of 
a lead pencil and nearly three inches long. Always kill 
these things. The margined beetle (Dytiscus) has hard 
shards covering the wings, strong swimming legs, and 
a pair of pincers in front; length of body one and one- 
half inches; female with fluted shards and male with 
smooth shell-like back, around which runs a yellowish- 
white stripe; the larva is the "water-scorpion," a round- 
bodied larva, with light rings at each abdominal joint. 




Pupa of Dragon Fly (natural size). 



The larva and pupa of the dragon-fly are very destruct- 
ive to small fish. Few insect pupa take food, but this 
animal feeds all the time; it has a pair of pincers on an 
extension arrangement, which is hinged to the front 
part of its head; there is a middle joint to this which 
lets the pincers lie in front when in repose, but allows 
them to be thrust out nearly three-fourths of an inch 
when it seizes a fish. I once put six young gold-fish, 
three-quarters of an inch in length, in a bowl with a 
dragon-fly larva, and it killed all six fish inside of an 



Parasites, Diseases and Enemies, 281 

hour. This dragon-fly (Libellulidcu) is also called darn- 
ing needle, mosquito-hawk and demoiselle. Perhaps 
the adult insect has its uses, but the fishculturist has 
no iise for it. 

The great larva of the helgramite fly (Corydaliis cor- 
nntiis) may kill some fish, but if it does I don't know it. 
This larva is two and one-half inches long, and has a 
powerful pair of pincers; it lives in brooks, under 
stones, and crawls ashore to enter the pupa stage under 
logs. The great insects fly by night and are seldom 
seen; the larva is a famous bait for black bass, and is 
called dobson, crawler, kill-devil, and about twenty 




I 

Helgramite Larva, "Dobson," 

other names. The female fly has short pincers, like 
the larva, but the male has two long "horns," which 
cross at the tips. 

The little "water boatman," which rows himself 
along, cannot harm fish to any extent. Trout will not 
eat them, nor will they touch "whirligigs," which play 
in schools on the surface; nor will they taste of the 
water cricket, "skater," or "skeeter," as it is variously 
called — the little, dried-up fellow which stands on the 
water with only its feet touching it. These water 
crickets eat small insects, but seem to get no goocl 



282 Modern Fishcultiirc in Fresh and Salt Water. 

from them, for they appear to be as dry inside as they 
are outside. If the "whirHgigs" eat anything it is when 
I am not looking, for they are so occupied with their 
game of tag through a crowd of their fellows that they 



W%%Af,^m, 





Pupa of Helgramite. 

cannot spare time to feed, and it is hard to tell who 
is "it." 

The larva of the stone-fly is the caddis, which makes 
itself a case of leaves, sticks, sand, or other material, 
and is harmless in all stages; therefore it has no busi- 




Female Helgramite Fly. 



ness to be included in the chapter on enemies of fish ; 
but insects will not get another inning in this book, 
and the fishculturist might wonder what the larva 
might be. Another good fish food that cannot harm a 



Parasites, Diseases and Enemies. 2S3 

fish is the soft larva of the May-fly, also called shad-fly, 
eel-fly, and by other names; it is one of the ephemera 
which only lives for a day or two in the perfect, or 
imago, state, but passes several years in the larval state 
in the water. 

MAMMALS. 

Years ago I met in executive session, all alone, and 
passed a law that I should not be allowed to take the 




Male Helgramite Fly. 

life of any living thing unless it was needed by me, or 
because it worked injury to my interests. Those are 
the only circumstances under which a man should kill 
anything. The law was flexible enough to allow of 
shooting a few game birds for my own table and for 
taking fish also. A pair of ospreys, sometimes called 
''fish-hawks," nested above my ponds every year, and 
often sailed over them with longing eyes, but my orders 
were not to harm them; they went to the salt water a 
few hundred yards below, and it was worth the price 
of admission to see them plunge from a height of a 
hundred feet and ^et a fish, One young one, and only 



284 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

one^ had to be killed because he would not be "shooed" 
nor stoned away from the trout ponds. 

This is related to show my forbearance toward the 
muskrat. In summer musky would come into the in- 
closure and swim about a big pool below the ponds, 




Stone Fly (Phryganea), Larva and Cases. 

raise a brood and enjoy life. When he burrowed into 
the dams he was trapped, and I often said to him before 
the yelping terriers had a whack at him: "Now, 
Musky, if you and your tribe will only dig where I 
want digging done we will dwell in peace; but you 
persist in boring into my dams, and we are no longer 
friends." But the terriers had no argument to make. 

MusKRATS. — For years I had suspected the musquash 
of eating fish, but had no evidence. The ground for sus- 
picion was that the muskrat ate animal food in the shape 
of fresh-water mussels (Unios), as was shown by the 
piles of shells which he took the trouble to carry to a fav- 
grite place. He is a queer fellow, and his habits are worth 



Parasites, Diseases and Enemies. 285 

studying; he leaves his '*sign" on a stone or log, in a 
conspicuous place, and never buries it, as dogs and 
cats do. I gave musky the benefit of the doubt, know- 
ing that he is the nearest relative of the beaver, and 
the name of "musk beaver" would fit him better than 
the one he bears. Having dissected hundreds and 
found no remains of fish, I was still skeptical, because 
of the eating of Unios. 

With all this in mind, I decided to find out what 
others might know on the subject, and to do this there 
is no way in which one can reach such a body of ob- 
servant field naturalists as in the columns of "Forest 
and Stream." Therefore I wrote: 

"In 'Forest and Stream' of July 30, 1898, I said 
that I had always suspected the muskrat of eating fxsh 
in the winter, because it is well known that it eats ani- 
mal food in the shape of Unios, or fresh-water mussels, 
but most of these rodents that I had examined were 
killed in summer, when they were mainly feeding on 
vegetation. I asked: *Can any one prove that the 
muskrat eats fish in winter when vegetation is scant?' 
To this question there came but one reply, but it was 
so full and complete that I publish it as a contribution 
to the life history of the muskrat. No doubt thousands 
of men have known for years what Mr, Held writes, 
but as I did not know it, and I have known the mus- 
quash as boy and man for over half a century, and as a 
summer burrower in my trout ponds for at least half 
that time, it is fair to assume that others may not know 
about the fish-eating habits of the muskrat. 

"Here is just the kind of letter that I love to receive. 
It is from Mr. William C. Held, Saginaw, Mich., and 
says : 
*' Tpu ask if any one c^n prove that the muskrat 



286 Modern Fishciilturc in Fresh and Salt Water. 

eats fish in winter. All our net fishermen can prove 
that they eat fish, as they are the most destructive thing 
they have to deal with during the fall and winter 
months. They chew into the nets and then chew out 
again, and in this way they let out many fish before the 
holes are located and repaired. As soon as the fisher- 
men have their nets set in the fall, they commence trap- 
ping around them, and in this way they catch most of 
the rats; but there are always a few that remain un- 
caught, which cause trouble all winter. 

'' 'In the winter one can see places on the ice where 
the muskrats have carried fish and eaten them night 
after night. Last spring I saw a fish-box into which a 
muskrat had gnawed a hole for the purpose of getting 
at the fish.' " 

The Mink varies his diet of poultry and game with 
fish. Once I dug out a mink's nest, and found a great 
lot of feathers, bones of birds and of fish, all around the 
helpless young. The mother escaped by another hole, 
and as for the old male mink, he would only take interest 
enough in the family to kill the young ; and that is one 
good trait in the mink, as cruel and bloodthirsty an ani- 
mal as walks this planet — one who kills for the love of 
killing, and is almost as bad as the human game hog 
who kills for count and brag. 

Otters are fish-eaters, and eat little else, but the 
American fishculturist has no fear of them, for they are 
entirely exterminated in parts that are only sparsely 
settled ; yet in Germany they are a pest to the fishcul- 
turist, and in that densely-populated land, yclept "Mer- 
rie England," packs of other hounds are still kept up. 

The Bear visits the streams where suckers run up 
to spawn in spring, and he impales them on his claws, 
or scoops tliem on land, and possibly may agree with a 



Parasites, Diseases and Enemies. 287 

noted thief and confidence-man of New York, who 
said : "A sucker is born every minute." 

Domestic Cats love fish, not in a platonic sense, but 
as epicures; and as much as they dislike to be wet, I 
have known a cat to plunge into a stream for fish. We 
all know that the house cat will wet a paw in the glass 
globe for a goldfish as readily as she will go for the 
canary bird when no one is watching, but few know 
that tabby will dive for fish. While fishing for trout 
between the mill ponds at Cold T: ring Harbor, Long 
Island, and leisurely casting in a pool, a splash drew 
attention to a large cat just emerging from the water 
with a handsome trout. She was wet all over, and must 
have struck her game where the water covered her back. 
I had neither gun nor pistol, and pussy lived to report. 
When I have a gun I make it a point to kill every cat 
that I find in the woods. My love of robins and other 
birds has brought me to hate this domestic tiger, which 
kills them. A maiden lady in the village usually had 
from twenty to thirty cats, and although she fed them 
w'tW there was no brook trout on their menu. Near her 
father's stables there was a private trout stream, and 
the owner gave me the privilege of taking eggs for the 
State. ]\Iy men reported that every morning there were 
remains of trout on the bank, where cats had eaten them. 
T rigged a dozen steel traps in places where cat tracks 
hinted that they v/ould do the most good, and said 
nothing to my men, for they had relatives near. Know- 
ing the racket a cat in a trap would make, I was there 
before davlight in order that there should be no dis- 
turbance of my neighbor's sleep. Three cats were my 
only reward, and as that didn't pay the scheme was 
dropped. 

The Raccoon. — This very scientific fisher has been 



2SS Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

left for the last, but it is not least. The Germans call 
this animal the "wash bear," from its habit of washing 
things before it eats them. As the coon is omnivorous 
it may be questioned if it washes birds ; and I know 
that it does not wash green corn, the "roastin' ear" of 
the South. The old darkey song says : 

"Ole Mistah Coon's a mighty man, I 

He carry a bushy tail; 
He steal ole massa's cawn at night, 

An' he husks it awn de rail. 

"De squirrel hab a bushy tail, 

An' stumpy grows de hair; 
De ole coon's tail am ringed all 'roun', 

An' de possum's tail am bare." 

Here is a condensed natural history, and such simple 
songs made negro minstrelsy popular forty years ago, 
but what they sing to-day is characterless. 

Next to the fox, if not before it, the coon ranks in 
cuteness. I saw one wade in on a riffle and go up 
stream, turning a stone with one forepaw and grab- 
bmg any fish or crayfish which might dart out with the 
other. It was in the summer, when the streams were 
low in Louisiana, and I had been fishing, but at that 
time was sitting on a log taking a bite at noon. A 
bunch willow concealed all but my head, and when the 
coon came in sight I suspended mastication and tried 
to suppress breathing, for a fellow may be out for 
years and not get a chance to see a wild animal search 
for its food as if it was unobserved. There was no 
desire to kill the coon, for it was midsummer, and 
neither flesh nor skin were good ; and then I'm that sort 
of fellow that, when not pressed for meat, would spend 
half a day to see a chipmunk dig its hole, and think the 
time well spent. 



Parasites, Diseases and Enemies. 2^9 

The coon proceeded cautiously, with one paw ready 
to grab before a stone was disturbed; then the stone 
was quickly upset and a grab made, and a crayfish was 
captured ; just how I could not see, but in a way that 
avoided the two great pinching claws, which were then 
broken off, and the crustacean scrubbed and eaten, as 
some darkies eat peanuts, shells and all. This ac- 
counted for the number of these claws seen on the 
riffles. I wonder if all coons break off the claws from 
crayfishes before they wash and eat then. 

Coons also kill and eat the small pond turtles, the 
painted and spotted ones of the northeastern United 
States, and perhaps the larger "sliders'* of the South. 
I have never seen them eat a turtle, but have seen the 
empty shells picked quite clean along the shore, and 
usually surrounded by coon tracks, forming good cir- 
cumstantial evidence. 

While fishing in Kansas a coon came out of the 
woods and washed a frog within t^iirty feet of me, and 
scrubbed it well, and went back into the brush. 

"Oh. Mistah Coon's a cunnin' t'ing, 

He ramble in de dark; 
An' de only t'ing dat 'stiirbs his mind 

Is to hear ole Ringo bark." 



SECTION VII. 



SALT-WATER FISH. 

Many salt-\Yater fishes have been successfully 
hatched, but never for rearing in ponds. The work 
has been confined to the United States Fish Commis- 
sion, and the States of New York and Massachusetts. 
The first work of the kind in America, as far as I know, 
was done by me at Noank, Conn., in June, 1874, when 
Prof. Baird wished to try and take the eggs of some 
sea-bass (Ccntropristes striatus), which were confined 
in fish cars. This was done with bleeding hands before 
I learned just how sharp these fin-rays were. I used 
floating boxes, and took many eggs, which were quite 
small, being twenty-five to the linear inch. These eggs 
were watched under the microscope several times a 
day, for the scientists of the United States Fish Com- 
mission were there, and the development recorded. 
Things went well until the fourth day, when a storm 
upset the boxes as the eggs were about to hatch. (See 
Report U. S. F. C, 1874.) 

Since that the experts have hatched the scup, or 
porgy ; the tautog, or blackfish ; the flounder, sea her- 
ring, sheepshead ; weakfish, or squeteague ; cod, had- 
dock, Spanish mackerel, and other salt-water species, 

290 



292 Modern Pishculture in Fresh and Salt Waier. 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 

CODFISH. 

The cod family is the most important of all the fishes, 
containing a large number of species of considerable 
size, distributed throughout all the parts of the north- 
ern hemisphere in great nftmbers. The cod is easily 
captured and readily preserved. It feeds more men 
than any other fish. Norway lives from it, and exports 
60 per cent, of the catch. 

It was the fisheries and not the sterile rocks of Mas- 
sachusetts which tempted our ancestors to settle on 
that rock-bound and inhospitable coast, and Iheir de- 
scendants remembered this when they put the great 
gilt codfish in the State Capitol, where it hangs to-day, 
to remind the law-makers that once the "Codfish Aris- 
tocracy" was the real thing, for the very existence of 
our "first families" in the early emigration days de- 
pended upon the humble codfish. 

The nutritious cod is found in the North Atlantic, 
North Pacific and Polar oceans to far beyond the Arc- 
tic Circle. In the West Atlantic it occurs in winter in 
considerable numbers as far south as the mouth of 
Chesapeake Bay, latitude 37 degrees, and stragglers 
have been observed off Cape Charles; Cape Hatteras 
may be considered its southern limit. 

Its distribution on the Pacific coast is not so well 
known, although it appears to occur on all the off-shore 
banks of that coast and to the coasts north of the Straits 
of Fuca. 

There is a cod bank outside of the mouth of the 
Columbia River, but it is not much fished, and on the 



S alt-Water Fish. 293 

Pacific coast, the cod fisheries of Alaska are of the 
greatest importance; but the Pacific fisheries are in- 
creasing. 

The cod spawns all winter, from November to the 
last of March, Its eggs are free, and will float in water 
of a density of 1.026 for a week or more, when they 
settle down a little. At a temperature of 45 to 38 
degrees they will hatch in from two to three weeks, 
and absorb the sac in a little less than half that time. 
The Government hatcheries at Gloucester, since 1878, 
Wood's Hole' and Ten-pound Island, Mass., turn out 
great numbers, hut we never made much of a success 
of it on Long Island, mainly because the water was 
seldom denser in the inner harbor than 1.018, and of 
the difficulty of getting and transporting the eggs. 

Many a cold morning before sunrise have I and my 
men been on the fish cars at Fulton Market taking cod 
eggs with fingers which had no feeling in them. Then 
we would take the eggs in jars of water and on flannel 
trays to be taken to the hatchery. I once took 3,000,000 
eggs from a twenty-five-pound cod, and left some 
which were not matured. A cod is sexually mature at 
four years old. When spawning at sea the sexes do 
not seem to come close together, as is the case with 
most of the fishes with whose spawning habits I am 
familiar. If the iigg meets the milt of the male and 
absorbs a spermatozoon, while absorbing water, the ^gg 
is fertilized. But nature, which gives the trout a few 
hundred eggs, provides the cod with millions, to cover 
their loss by not being fertilized, and many are thrown 
on shore. 

Special apparatus was needed for floating eggs, and 
the late Capt. Chester devised a "tidal hatcher" that 
let the water in at the bottom and out by a siphon, 



294 Modern Pishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

which caused the water to rise and fall in the jars. 
These jars had holes in their bottoms, which were 
corked, and the jars filled with eggs and water; a bit 
of cheesecloth was fastened over the top, the jars re- 
versed in the box, on strips, and the cork removed. 
The water w^ould then rise until the siphon began to 
work, and then it would fall until the siphon stopped. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 



THE TOM COD. 



This fish {Micro gadus tomcod) is a miniature cod- 
fish, to the casual observer ; rigged out with three dorsal 
fins and two anal fins in true cod style. It ranges from 
Labrador to Virginia, coming into harbors to spawn in 
brackish water. In some parts it is called "frostfish," 
but there is another fish by that name, and '"tomcod" is 
more generally used. In New York harbors it spawns 
along the docks and in the weeds in December ; eggs 
free and heavy, about fifteen to the inch. They hatch 
in thirty to forty days, and the young take food at four 
to six days, according to temperature. The tomcod 
grows to two pounds weight, but the average is between 
one-quarter and one-half pound. I began hatching this 
fish in 1884, with some sneering from the inland Com- 
missioners, but when those who live near the salt water 
found it out the applications for them came in fast. The 
fish increased in all the harbors. In my report to the 
New York Commission for 1893, page 36, I say: ''Be- 
tween November 2y and January 15 we had a good run, 



Salf-JVater Fish. 



m 



and turned out nearly 16,000,000 fry, which kept our 
salt-water pump going day and night. This fish is very 
proHfic, as is shown by the fact that from thirty-two 
females we got an average of 30,000 eggs each, and we 




Chester's Tidal Hatcher. 

have taken as high as 75,000 eggs from one female. 
Larger tomcods and more of them were never seen in 
this harbor before." 

If the eggs are placed in fresh water from the start 



296 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

they will hatch, and I have reared them in fresh water ; 
but if the salt water failed and we changed to fresh 
after several days, the fish often hatched, but died. This 
would be a good fish for large lakes, because it has soft 
fins, and is therefore better food for big trout than any 
sharp-finned fishes. 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 

LOBSTERS (Homarus). 

In the latter part of the winter of 1885-86 the late 
Prof. Baird caused experiments to be made at Wood's 
Hole, Mass., with lobster eggs. At that time it was the 
belief that lobsters spawned all the year round, because 
eggs were found on some females at all seasons. We 
now know that an individual spawns but once in two 
years. She can only grow when she sheds her shell, 
which she does not do while eggs are attached to her 
abdomen. This is the routine : Say she has shed and 
spawned in the late summer of 1890; the eggs hatch in 
the summer of '91, after which she makes growth and 
mioults, not spawning again until the next summer. 

LOBSTERS ARE BIENNIAL SPAWNERS. 

In the "Scientific American Supplement," No. 945, 
February 10, 1894, was published an article of mine, 
entitled, "What We Know of the Lobster," which that 
paper had held unpublished since September, 1892, six- 
teen months, as is shown by the letter of Prof. Samuel 
Garman, given below. In the meantime Dr. Francis H, 



S alt-Water Fish. 



297 



Herrick announced his discovery that the lobster was 
a biennial spawner in his extensive and most complete 
life-history of the lobster which has ever been pub- 
lished ; thus anticipating Prof. Garman and myself, who 
were studying on the same lines. In the Report of the 




Tom COD. 



New York Fish Commission (1892), pages 50-57, I 
refer to this, and give Prof. Carman's report on the 
lobster to the Massachusetts Fish Commission (Decem- 
ber, 1891). The United States Fish Commission Bul- 
letin for 1893, pages 281-286, printed my article from 
the "Scientific American Supplement" in full. I can 
only quote a few extracts : 

"The female spawns but once in two years. Notes 
made on the eggs of lobsters in the New York Aqua- 
rium in 1876-78 show that they hatched before July, or 
when the water reached a temperature of about 60 de- 
grees Fahr. In 1891 I began the hatching of lobsters 
for the New York State Fishery Commission, and 
found that eggs taken from lobsters from the middle to 
the last of July did not hatch that year. Then it seemed 
as if the lobster might be a biennial spawner, but I did 
not dare to say so. A report of my observations sent to 
Prof. Samuel Garman, of the Museum of Comparative 



298 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

Zoology, Cambridge, Mass., brought a letter dated 
August 30, 1892, complimenting my studies on the life- 
history of the lobster and inclosing a report to the Mas- 
sachusetts Fish Commission, dated Decemberxi7, 1891, 
in which he shows that his investigations proved that 
the lobster spawned but once in two years. Therefore, 
I have solid backing in making the statement that heads 
this paragraph. 

"Since this I have taken, for the New York Fishery 
Commission, a large number of lobster eggs, and have 
turned out this year from Cold Spring Harbor, Long 
Island, 177,000 young lobsters into the waters of Long 
Island Sound. These were from eggs which otherwise 
would have been sent to market with the parent and 
have been boiled and thrown away with the shells, and 
were therefore just so many saved from destruction 
and given a chance to struggle for life. There is no 
law in the State of New York relating to "berried" lob- 
sters. The eggs number fifteen to the linear inch, and 
measure 6,090 to the fluid ounce, are attached not only 
to the swimmerets, but also to each other by threads, 
and are aerated by an almost constant motion of the 
appendages, and in confinement many eggs are loos- 
ened and fall oft, perhaps from the habit that the parent 
has of poking among them with her legs. ^= * * 

"The young do not hatch until the water reaches a 
temperature of about 60 degrees Fahr., which in Long 
Island Sound might occur after the latter part of May, 
and in that region the hatching season is over by the 
middle of July, and as the mother has been feeding 
while carrying her eggs, she can then shed her shell 
and begin to develop the so-called "coral" that epicures 
prize, which will form the eggs to be laid the second 
year. The fact that female lobsters bearing eggs out- 



S alt-Water Fish. 299 

side, while others have the coral inside, are taken in 
winter, supports the theory of biennial spawning. 
August t6, 1893, I took a lobster from a car, which the 
owner told me had spawned two days before. The 
microscope could detect nothing in the eggs, because 
the yolk filled them entirely. Four days later the yolk 
had shrunken and the "mulberry'' stage could be seeri in 
the clear space, and by the 25th the eye was visible. 
The eggs are dark when first laid, and grow lighter in 
color as they develop. From this until October no 
change was seen." 

The pump broke and they died. 

There is no food for a larval lobster known to me 
that is as acceptable as another larval lobster that has 
just molted. I have tried to bribe them by hanging 
flesh of eel, clam, beef, lobster (adult), blue crab, and 
fiddler crab, but without avail ; their love for their fel- 
lows which prompted them to take their brethren in out 
of the wet, lest they might be devoured by small fishes, 
baffled my efforts, and there was no resource but to 
plant the fry as soon as hatched. If each youngster 
could be placed in a tank, or even a small compartment, 
by itself, no doubt it would accept any, or all, of the 
foods named, but at present we are not prepared to feed 
a million or more individual lobsters in separate stalls 
for months before turning them out to shift for them- 
selves. They cannot be reclaimed from cannibalism by 
any known means. They are fighters by nature, and 
w"hen a lobsterman has a lot of adults in a floating car 
and a storm comes up each lobster blames his neighbor 
for any collision that may ensue, and they engage in a 
general fight, which is not only disastrous to them- 
selves, but to the lobsterman, for lobsters are not mar- 
ketable in fragments. 



300 Modern Pishciilture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

Just how the eggs are impregnated is not known. It 
is said that the milt is placed near the oviduct some time 
before the extrusion of the eggs, and that they are fer- 
tilized by passing over it. Of this I know nothing, and 
merely insert this paragraph to show that this question 
was not overlooked. The sexes of lobsters can easily 
be distinguished without the presence of eggs. When 
the pairing takes place and how it is performed no man 
knows. A study of the reproductive organs has devel- 
oped a theory, and there we stop. 

The increase of population has naturally increased 
the consumption of lobsters, and the great decrease in 
the size of this crustacean is an evidence that they are 
slow of growth, and the marketable lobster of to-day, 
weighing from one to two pounds, may be from four 
to six years old, possibly more. In all these estimates 
of weights a fairly plump, well-fed lobster is meant, 
and not one that would be rejected by the housewife as 
not worth picking the meat from, for she has learned 
to weigh them in her hand, and of several of the same 
size, to choose the heaviest. 

They are hatched in jars, and swim at once. They 
are in a larval state at first, and moult three times be- 
fore they are perfect and get the big claws. It is when 
it moults, and is soft, that his fellows devour him. In 
a natural state the youthful Honiarus would seek shel- 
ter for this operation, hence we must plant them at once, 
or we might have only one fat fellow left, who, like 
Gilbert's mariner, could say : 



*'0, I am the cook and the captain bold, 
And the mate of the Nancy brig; 

The bo'sun tight, 

And the midshipmite, 

And the crew of the captain's gig." 



SECTION VIII. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 

CHAPTER XL. 

FROG CULTURE. 

About once a year the story of a mythical frog farm, 
where much wealth is harvested every season, goes the 
rounds of the newspapers. Seth Green started it in an 
article on raising frogs, published in one of the Re- 
ports of the New York State Fish Commission, stating 
how easily the spawn could be gathered and hatched ; 
but he went no further ; he was widely quoted and that 
was the end of it, if not the object of his paper. He 
was right. They can be hatched in any quantity in 
pools of still water at summer temperatures, and the 
tadpoles can be fed and grown if protected until the 
transformation into a frog comes, and then they leave 
the water and catch insects ; it is impossible then to 
feed them and they die. I speak from experience, hav- 
ing been a student of the frog during a long career of 
fishculture, covering thirty years. In the early days I 
read of a successful frog farm near Xutley, N. J., and 
went there, but no one knew of it, nor could I find the 
man, A similar experience in Indiana made me skep- 

301 



302 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

tical, but it was only personal study and experience that 
made me an unbeliever. 

I can feed a single frog by dangling a bit of meat 
before its nose ; the meat stirs and the frog seizes it, 
but it will not pick up that meat from the ground if 
thrown there. Suppose you have a million frogs. 
Imagine yourself feeding them by dangling meat be- 
fore each individual nose ! 

Tadpoles are hatched by the thousand for every frog 
that becomes adult. Fish, birds and frogs feed on 
them in the larva or tadpole state, and when they 
emerge from that they encounter the same enemies, 
with snakes added. 

The frog is a solitary animal, never in the company 
of another except in the spring of the year, when mat- 
ing, or in the winter, when they congregate in spring 
holes, or other places. They cannot be kept in num- 
bers, like fishes, because they would starve if obliged 
to compete for food \\*ith their fellows. The frog farm 
has not yet been established where they can be hatched 
and fed artificially until ready for market, and it never 
will be. 

When you hear of any person rearing frogs on arti- 
ficial food it is simply a lie. The frog is being killed 
out where it is hunted, and the supplies come from re- 
mote districts, where the rural population does not eat 
them, or where tliere is no population. 

According to inquiries of the United States. Fish 
Commission the annual catch in the United States is 
but little less than 1,000,000, with a gross value to the 
hunters of about $50,000, or 5 cents each. The con- 
sumer pays three times that price, which varies, accord- 
ing to the market. Dressed legs yield the hunters 
from 10 to 50 cents per pound. The bullfrog is the 



Miscellaneous. ' 3^3 

largest and best species ; the little spring and meadow 
froffs onlv grow to 3 and 4 inches, length of body, 
whfle the' bullfrog reaches nine. The little "pickerel 
frog" (Rana palustris) with bright yellow on thighs 
and legs, has a disagreeable odor and is rarely eaten ; 
all the others are good. We have four other species, 
all small except the bullfrog, besides the arboreal frogs, 
which are usually called "tree toads." 



A GREAT TRANSFORMATION. 

The change from a tadpole to a perfect frog is as 
wonderful as the change from a hairy, crawling cater- 
piller into a beautiful butterfly ; but somehow this won- 
derful transformation into a frog, while weU known 
to a few, has not seemed to impress the general mind, 
as in the case of the butterfly. What happens is this : 
The frog lays its eggs, which are fertilized after being 
laid, as tn the case of most fishes ; the eggs are globu- 
lar, jellv-like masses, which swell greatly after extru- 
sion. In a few days the embryo is seen moving about, 
and it emerges from the mass without absorbing it, 
a most unus\ial waste in animal life. The young is 
coiled in the egg, with a tail, much like an embryo 
fish, but having its gills outside, and so hatches in an 
almost shapeless form. Gradually it takes on the form 
of the large proteus (Necturus), called "lizard" on the 
Great Lakes, which retains its outside gills when adult. 
Then these outside gills absorb or develop inwardly, 
and the future frog is in all respects a fish. It has a 
long embryonic fin that is eel-like, and begins back 
of tlie head and goes around the slim tail to the vent. 
Its eye is well developed, and the "herring bone" mus- 



304 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

cles in its tail can be plainly seen. It has a circular 
mouth, which can feed on either animal or vegetable 
matter. Its abdomen is large, and fitted for digesting 
vegetables. It rivals the ant in cleaning the flesh from 
delicate skeletons for the zoologist. 

In thio state it passes its first summer and goes into 
the mud in winter, and comes out hungry in early 
spring. Like all larvae, it is a greedy feeder, and soon 
begins to show its growth and development by budding 
a pair of hindlegs, which are completed about the time 
the forelegs begin to show and the ears to develop.* 
When these legs are fully developed the tail begins to 
absorb, and the frog has already begun to take oxygen 
from the air occasionally ; it is changing from a gill- 
breathing fish to a lung-breathing animal. Think what 
this means : Lungs are growing and gills are being 
absorbed, yet in the intermediate state the animal can 
breathe with both organs. The absorption of the tail 
goes to nourish some part of the body, but the adoles- 
cent bullfrog is now^ smaller than the tadpole from 
which it changed. 

Not only this, but its long, convoluted intestine, fit- 
ted to digest vegetation, has somehow changed to a 
shorter one, for the vegetarian requires a complex 
apparatus to digest its food, while the similar organs in 
the carnivora are simple, flesh being easier of digestion 
than vegetables. 

MARKETING THE FROG. 

Tons of frogs now come to New York markets each 
year. They are from Canada, Michigan and from the 

* The ears of a frog are those large disks back of the eye ; 
thev are external ear-drums without a meatus. 



Miscellaneous, 305 

West and South, where the people have not yet learned 
to eat them ; for there are practically none to be found 
near my boyhood frogging grounds, where I could 
easily get a hundred or more in a day. They do not 
get a chance to grow, for it is my belief that "an old 
rouser" of a bullfrog, with a body say 8 inches long, 
is at least a dozen years old. I can't prove this from 
experiment, but believe it from the slow growth that 
several frogs of my acquaintance have made. One 
that had lost part of one hind foot I knew for three 
years ; it was about 5 inches long when I first caught it, 
and had not grown over an inch in three years, al- 
though in a pool where food was plenty. As about 
9. inches is the limit, this frog had not ceased to grow. 

In the report of the United States Fish Commission- 
er for the year ending June 30, 1896, page 497, Dr. 
Hugh M. Smith gave the products of the fisheries for 
1894, and we find the following credited to the frog 
catch, which, as before said, is mainly sent to New 
York and other large cities: Arkansas 58,900 lbs., 
value $4,162; Indiana 24,000 lbs., $824; Missouri 154,- 
818 lbs., $9,676; New York 61,400 lbs., $5,126; Ohio 
14,040 lbs., $2,340; Vermont 5,500 lbs., $825. Total, 
318,658 lbs., valued at $22,953. No other States are 
quoted. 

Few people outside of the cities eat them. When the 
rural population take to eating frogs there will be none 
for the great markets. I have seen whole frogs skinned 
in Fulton Market, but usually only the hind legs are 
used; for, except in the case of monster specimens, 
there is little meat on other parts. 

The eggs are extruded by the female, assisted by 
pressure of the forelegs of the male, who fertilizes them 
as they pass out. 



3o6 Modern Fishculture in fresh and Salt Water. 



CHAPTER XLI. 



TERRAPINS. 



There are many species of terrapins, speaking by the 
card, but to the market-man and epicure there is but 
one and this is the "diamond back,'' so caUed because 
of the markings on its upper shell. The flesh of this 
animal, Malacleminys patustris, is gelatinous and is 
always stewed. Its almost fabulous price has led to its 
being hunted so much that it is in danger of being ex- 
terminated. It ranges from New York to Texas, but 
the southern specimens are not in high esteem. Ches- 
apeake Bay furnishes the greatest number, and Balti- 
moreans not only think them the best but also believe 
that they cannot be properly served outside that city. 
Epicures of Philadelphia and New York have the same 
notion regarding their own cities. 

They are sold by the dozen, or computed at that 
rate, and a "count" terrapin is a female that measures 
6 inches in length on the under shell. No male is ever 
a "count." From this the price increases greatly; a 
female of 8 inches, which is about the extreme size, 
being rated as two "counts," more or less according 
to the market. Twenty years ago the "counts'' were 
worth only the trifling sum of $20 to $30 per dozen, 
but in 1888 they mcreased to $75 to $100 per dozen. 
Suppose that a dozen would weigh 40 lbs., at $100 they 
would cost $2.50 per pound live weight, the most ex- 
pensive morsel known in modern days. No wonder 
that the southern yellow and red-bellied "sliders" come 



Miscellaneous. 307 

to northern markets and turn into ''terrapin." Who 
wouldn't ? 

The terrapins inhabit the salt marshes, and lay their 
eggs in the sand, as all turtles do, and the young crawl 
out and go to the water to feed. Their food is mainly 
fish and crabs. Their threatened extinction has led 
to efforts for their preservation. It is evident that they 
must be allowed to lay their eggs in the sand and have 
the sun hatch them in the good old way, and that all 
that can be done is to protect the young and perhaps 
feed them. Senator Stewart of Maryland, had a ter- 
rapin enclosure. The Baltimore American said : 
"Messrs. A. B. Riggin & Co. have added another dia- 
mond-backed terrapin inclosure on the Annamessex 
River, adjoining Crisfield, says the Baltimore Ameri- 
can. The inclosure is formed by driving sixteen-foot 
boards in the mud to the depth of six feet, or to the 
hard bottom, making a secure pen for the terrapin. 
About two acres of muddy bottom are fenced in, with 
knolls exposed here and there, interspersed with salt 
water, which is constantly renewed by the ebbing and 
flowing of the tide. There are also artificial banks of 
sand in which the terrapin deposit their eggs, leaving 
them to be hatched by the heat of the sun. Eggs are 
usually deposited from June to the middle of August, 
and soon hatch in the warm summer sun. A grown 
terrapin will lay twelve eggs at a time, and lay twice 
during the season. Terrapin require about three years 
to become full "counts." 

"During the winter the terrapin plow deeply into the 
mud and lie dormant, requiring no food or attention, 
only v/arm quarters. When they wake up in the 
spring they develop a vigorous appetite, and are fed 
principaU)^ on hard-shell crabs, which they devour with 



3oS Modern Pishculture in Fresh and Salt tVatef. 

great greed. After a few days' feeding they learn to 
come to the feeding place with the eagerness of chick- 
ens in a barnyard. 

'*At the close of last season the Messrs. Riggin had 
3,600 young terrapin on hand, which were carried safe- 
ly through the winter. The warm days of early spring 
caused their owners to remove them from the winter 
quarters sooner than usual, and the cold wave proved 
very disastrous, killing about six hundred of them, 
which means a loss, at the present valuation, of $1,200. 
In purchasing stock terrapin those of five inches cost 
$13 a dozen ; six inches, $34 a dozen, and seven to nine 
inches, $60 a dozen. They sell at from $60 to $80 a 
dozen." 

There is not room here to record all such experi- 
ments as are at hand, the accumulation of years, but 
the above quotation tells about how far the culture of 
terrapin has gone. If, under proper conditions, the 
young can be confined, fed and protected, there may be 
a future for terrapin culture. The Messrs. Riggin's 
board enclosure must have had spaces for the entrance 
of water and food, and just how these were arranged 
to prevent the exit of young terrapins is not explained. 
The average newspaper reporter can tell the public all 
about the culture of fish, frogs, terrapin and other 
things, if he happens to think of it. He makes a note 
or two and then takes the hobbles from his imagination 
and lets it roam. A terrapin is a better climber than 
an oyster, and "sixteen-foot boards in the mud to the 
depth of six feet" would secure the diamond-backs, 
if the water did not rise the other ten feet, a point on 
which he is silent. 

I believe it to be possible to breed this animal profi- 
tably. The enormous and ever increasing prices that 



Miscellaneous. 309 

g'enuine diamond backs are bringing will pay for much 
food and attention. Wealthy men are paying prices 
for this reptile which almost equal the expenditure of 
I.ucullus for the tongues of nightingales when he mere- 
ly wished to show his extravagance, for it may be ques- 
tioned if the tongue of that bird exceeds any other in 
delicacy ; or if the tongue of any bird is a real delicacy. 
On these points few of us can speak authoritatively. 
That terrapin culture can be made profitable I do not 
doubt, as there is no prospect of the price ever drop- 
ping from its present height. 



CHAPTER XLII. 

NUMBER OF EGGS IN DIFFERENT FISH. 

SuNFiSH. — Once I computed the eggs in a little sun- 
fish. The extreme length of the fish, including the 
caudal fin, was 6J inches, and its weight was 5^ ounces. 
The fish was captured on June 16, and was nearly 
ready to spawn; the weight of the ovaries was 1:^ 
ounces. The eggs measured twenty-eight to the inch, 
making 21,952 to the cubic inch. The displacement 
of the ovaries in water was a trifle over two cubic 
inches, and the number was estimated in round num- 
bers to be 44,000 — a most enormous number for so 
small a fish. 

The Eel. — Of eel eggs an editorial note in Forest 
and Stream, Dec. 19, 1878, said : "Happening to be in 



310 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Watet. 

Mr. Blackford's office a short time ago when a six- 
pound eel with spawn was brought for examination, 
Mr. Mather proposed a computation of the eggs. He 
took the ovary home. Under the microscope the eggs 
appear to be of an octagonal form, but this is due whol- 
ly to their pressing upon one another ; when separated 
they assume the globular form. The use of the mi- 
crometer failed to give satisfactory results because the 
eggs varied greatly in size. Mr. Mather therefore 
placed a number in line, measured and counted them, 
and found them to average 80 to the inch. Then he 
took the whole mass of eggs, halved, quartered, and 
further divided, seventeen times in all, until the section 
small enough to count represented 1-131,072 of the 
total number. The count showed 68 eggs, or 8,912,- 
896 in the whole. A second computation in the same 
way showed yy eggs in the counted mass, or 10,092,544 
altogether. And to make the computation still more 
certain, a third count was made, which showed yi eggs 
in the last division, or 9,306,112 in the whole ovaries. 
From these results Mr. Mather fixes the number of 
eggs in this particular eel at fully nine millions.^' 

The eel goes to salt water to breed, and while we do 
not know how its eggs are deposited, we know that it 
passes through a larval state, the very young having 
been considered to be a distinct animal by the older 
naturalists. 



TABLE OF THE NUMBER OF EGGS IN VARIOUS FISHES. 

The following is taken from the "Manual of Fish- 
culture" of the United States Fish Commission, omit- 
ting such fishes as have little importance, or whose 



Miscellaneous. 



3ii 



eggs have been mentioned in other parts of the book, 
and using "free" for "non-adhesive." 





Character of 
Eggs. 


Average 

Number 

per Fish. 


Maximum Egg 
Production. 


No'^ie of Fish. 


Number 
of Eggs. 


Weiqht of 
Fish. 


Atlantic Salmon 

BiaclJ Basses 


Heavy, free 

Heavy, adhesive.. 
Heavy, adhesive . . 
Heavy, adhesive.. 

Heavy, free 

Buoyant, free 

Semi- buoyant, 

slightly adhesive 
Semi-buoyant, 


9.363 
3000 to 10000 

3006"to"4000 
41,000 

! 100,000 

[- 35,000 
40,000 


20.992 

' '5. 200 
546,000 

265,000 


22i§ lbs. 


Crapoies 




Frosc-flsh, Coregonus. 
Grayling 


V^4" 


MacKere! • 


IV2 


Mimkf>l hin"'e 


35 


Whitefish 




*WKifo "Por/>Vi 













* The table gives the eggs of this fish as " buoyant, non-adhesive," I 
hp'e written that they adhere to " floating sticks, weeds, etc.,^' and this is 
rJAmt.— F. M. 



CHAPTER XLIIL 



THE "working,"' or "bLOO^MING ' OF PONDS. 



Anglers find that at certain times in summer there is 
a condition of things in large natural ponds which 
seems to deprive the fish of all desire to take food. In 
Forest and Stream of Aug. 2y, 1898, several corre- 
spondents referred to this, and I will condense their re- 
marks here, as they show the different phases of this 
little understood but very common occurrence. 

Mr. A. L. Jordan leads off with some questions, a 
statement of fact, and a final question. He says : 

■'May I be allowed to ask through your columns a 



3i2 Modern Fiskcutiure in Presh and Salt Water. 

few questions concerning the working of ponds, and 
the method of fishing the ponds when in that condi- 
tion ? I very much des«ire to solve the problem of the 
whys and wherefores of a pond's working. What is 
the cause of a pond's working? What good does it 
accomplish? How does it affect the habits of trout or 
any fish ? What is the best method of fishing during 
the pond's working? 

"[ have been for the last three years on Lake Twit- 
chell, near Big Moose, in the Adirondacks, during the 
latter part of August and the first part of September. 
Last year the condition of the lake was exceedingly 
bad, an old guide saying he had never seen any lake in 
such a condition. What I term the workings were all 
over the bars and were from 3 to 5 or 6 feet tall, grow- 
ing to within a few inches of the top of the water. 
They were of a substance somewhat yellowish in color, 
and of a thick, slimy nature. After a heavy wind the 
shores would be covered with a lot of black stuff 
washed ashore. 

"The trout in this water were slow and sluggish, 
and not particularly anxious to please the fisherman 
with a rise to his cast. W^hen opened they had no visi- 
ble traces of the food they were feeding upon, and 
they were very fat and in a good condition. It was 
their custom to break water at sunset, but this year 
they would even forego that sport. What caused this 
inactivity?" 

Mr. L. O. Crane also wants to know about the 
"specks" in the lakes and ponds during July and Aug- 
ust, when the fishing is poor, and adds: "Some say 
the specks are caused by the lakes fermenting ; others 
say they are caused by a plant blooming in the bottom 
of the lakes, and others by the blow from trees coming 



Miscellaneous. 313 

into the lake. Please set us all right on this point that 
1 have heard discussed so long." 

Then the following appears: "I find in Bulletin U. 
S. F. C, Vol. VI., p. 341, a paragraph upon the 'water 
bloom' of ponds, from which I quote : 

" 'Lower forms of algse, of the varieties Nostocha- 
ceae, Oscillariae and Chroococcaceac, occasionally pro- 
duce by their astonishingly rapid growth the so-called 
'water bloom' (IVasserbluetc) , and transform the water 
into a blue-green mass resembling oil. Sometimes 
this 'water bloom' causes the death of all the fish in a 
pond ; in other cases only certain varieties die, and 
frequently the fish are not at all afifected by it. So far 
no experiments have been made with the view to ascer- 
tain which of the algae forming the 'water bloom' ex- 
ercise an injurious influence on fish. It is therefore 
very desirable that careful observation should be made 
in this respect.' 

"In the United States no doubt similar effects are 
produced by related forms of algae. It is usually stat- 
ed that the seeds of certain water plants float at the 
surface of ponds and make the water cloudy until fer- 
tilization increases their specific gravity, when they 
sink to the bottom and continue their development." 

The German authority quoted is Dr. Berthold Ben- 
ecke, formerly living at Konigsberg. 

This last writer is close to the facts, and it may be 
that in some cases, unknown to me, the water may have 
resembled oil. But now comes Judge J. S. Van Cleef, 
of Poughkeepsie, N. Y., who is closer yet, and hits the 
bulls-eye in the following remarks : 

'T think that I can answer quite fully your question 
in regard to what you call the 'blooming' of ponds, but 
which is more commonly called 'working or clouding.' 



3 14 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

This condition of the water does not always result 
from the same cause, but I am satisfied that it results 
from one single cause in the pure water lakes of the 
mountain regions of the Catskills. In the Bay of 
Quinte the blooming of the water evidently comes from 
the spores of an aquatic weed or plant which abounds 
in all the shallow waters of that bay. So far as I have 
had the opportunity for observation almost every lake, 
pond or water abounds in aquatic weeds peculiar to 
itself. Where the water is not over about 4 feet in 
depth these plants abound in a large amount of insect 
life, and where the water is deeper there is, as a rule, 
an entire absence of animal life. In the waters of the 
Catskills, with which I am quite familiar, I have never 
known of a single case where these weeds or plants 
throw out spores of any kind which cloud the water. 
Mr. Cornelius Van Brunt, who is quite an eminent 
misroscopist, and I, some twenty years ago or more, 
took particular pains to find out what caused the cloud- 
ing of the waters in two of the lakes of the Catskills, 
ptalsam Lake and Willewemoc Lake, and in both cases 
we found that this clouding was caused by the spores 
of the fresh-water sponge, which abounded in both 
r^.kes. 

"The waters of these two lakes, like most of the 
lakes of the Catskills, were very pure, being spring 
water, and on the bottom of the lakes, at a depth of 
about 2 feet or 2i- feet, this fresh-water sponge existed 
in considerable abimdance, each sponge being not over 
2 or 2^- inches in length by i or 2 inches in width, and 
when taken in the hand and squeezed there seemed to 
be nothing of them. The clouding of the lakes was 
found to extend down from 6 to 12 inches, and to be 
produced by millions of spores thrown out by the fresh- 



Miscellaneous. 315 

water sponge ; and as I understand it, they are thrown 
out with very great rapidity, and the lakes where these 
sponges exist remain clouded until there comes a de- 
rided storm, when the spores are precipitated to the 
bottom of the lake, and the water becomes perfectly 
clear again in two or three days. 

"In my testimony in regard to Forest Lake, near 
Hudson, N. Y., I referred to the fact that this lake 
was free from cloud, and that from a personal inspec- 
tion of the lake I had failed to find any fresh-water 
sponges. In regard to this examination I can only add 
that the examination of the waters of these lakes was 
made under a microscope of the highest magnifying 
power suitable for such a purpose, and that no spores 
were found except those produced by the fresh-water 
sponge." 

After this an invitation was extended to me to say 
something on this subject by a friend, who wrote : "No 
doubt you saw the different theories about the working 
of ponds in a late Forest and Stream. What do you 
think of them? Who is right?" 

My answer was : "All are right. There are differ- 
ent causes for this disturbance of the water. One 
year the mill-pond at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Is- 
land, bloomed twice, once in the middle of July, from 
Nostoc, which lasted four days, when the water cleared 
and the bass and perch were just^ coming to their ap- 
petites, when early in August it bloomed again with the 
fresh-water sponge, as described by Mr. Van Cleef. 
During the last bloom many sunfish and some white 
perch died, and the bass and yellow perch seemed to 
abstain from food, certainly from baits offered, until 
September. There is a theory that the pollen from 
some trees — ash, I believe, is one — cloud the water at 



3i6 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

times and the fish then refuse all baits. I know noth- 
ing of this. 

''Nostoc, or Nostochacex, as the quotation from the 
Bulletin of the U. S. Fish Commission has it, is a low 
form of vegetation which grows in fresh water and on 
damp ground. It is jelly-like, and is composed of 
threads which consist of globular cells, between a dozen 
or more of which are larger cells, and these are thrown 
off and float by thousands in the water. On land I 
have seen masses of it in the swamps from 3 to 5 inches 
in diameter, covered with jelly, and so like the egg- 
masses of Anihlystonia, or salamanders, which are often 
improperly called 'lizards' — the true lizards have scales, 
and do not live in water, but love the sun — that one 
had to look twice to tell the difference. Nostoc is of a 
bluish or greenish color, and the ^gg bunches referred 
to are whitish, slightly opaque. There are many spe- 
cies of Nostoc, but all have the characters given above. 

"The fresh-water sponges, as Mr. Van Cleef says, 
throw off great quantities of spores and cloud the 
water. These sponges also have many species, are 
very tender and difficult to detach from wood or stone, 
for preservation entire, because they are so tender. 
Being animal, their decay often renders the water in 
the reservoirs of cities very foul and 'fishy.' Then 
people complain of the fish in the reservoirs, but live 
fish do not pollute water.'' 

In Germany this condition of ponds is called "was- 
ser-bluthe'.' ; in France, "Fleurs d' Eau," and in Eng- 
land "Blooming," or "Breaking," or "Cruddling." The 
London Fishing Ga::ctte, Mar. 11, 1899, in an article on 
this is quoted : 

"At certain times in each year, generally in autumn, 
th^ Shropshire meres become turbid with these green 



Miscellaneous. 317 

particles, the water becomes unfit for domestic pur- 
poses, and it defies the power of filtration, soon clog- 
ging- up the pores of filters. Fish become sickly in it, 
and in some instances die, and in others are easily 
caught. 

"A Mr. Southwell relates that in a lake of about five 
acres, in very hot weather in June, the lake broke, and 
there shortly appeared on the surface large numbers of 
eels, wdiich attracted the attention of the villagers, who 
took to the boats, and with spears and other implements 
many were captured, quite in a sickly and stupefied 
condition. 

"This condition of things continues in varying peri- 
ods from a few days to months. After a time the water 
emits a very putrid odor from the decomposition of 
the green particles. In Copmere last year the turbidity 
commenced about the middle of July, and it was not 
until the middle of October that it subsided, after which 
the mere cleared and seemed to have undergone a veri- 
table purification by the process, so much so that it 
conveys tiie impression of being a sanitation of Nature 
to purify the silted organic deposits which almost fill 
these meres. 

"Copmere was about fourteen days before the de- 
composition of the green scum set in ; the surface of 
the water then, began to give off a putrid odor. The 
prevelence of these green appearances is variable. 
They disappear and reappear, and occur in greater 
quantities in various parts of the Shropshire meres, but 
in Copmere last year they were generally diffused 
throughout. * '"== '•- Copmere did not break in 
1895, it remained very clear all summer and autumn ; 
but a very singular fact is connected with this excep- 
tion of breaking, in that a great quantity of fish died 



3i8 Modern Fishcultiire in Fresh and Salt Water. 

that year of a fungus-growth disease, whereas in 1896 
none died, notwithstanding the mere broke badly. 

"It is said of Blake Meer. one of the meres near 
Ellesmere, that this phenomenon does not occur, and 
the water there is selected for drinking purposes, while 
the other meres are in the breakage state. * ''' '^' 
You will now be prepared to know that this breaking 
of the meres is due to microscopic algae, of which va- 
rious species cause the phenomenal appearance. Dr. 
Drummond found the green color of the water of Lake 
Glaslough in Ireland owing to vast quantities of a floc- 
culent oscillating algae. In Loch Hainining in Selkirk- 
shire a rich purple color occurs on the surface owing to 
the presence, according to Dr. Greville, of an alga of 
the genus Lyngbya. In a loch near Aberdeen a species 
of Rk'ulana caused the peculiar appearance; another 
species, Anabcena tios-aquse, was also present." 

See chapter on diseases. 



CHAPTER XLIV. 



FISHW^\YS. 



A small fishway, or, as some call it, a "fish ladder" 
is often needed by the fishculturist to enable fish to 
surmount a dam. If possible this should be above the 
dam, its upper end extending into the pond, or many 
fish will pass its outlet and remain at the dam vainly 
trying to ascend. Space forbids going into this ques- 
tion in extenso, but as a 6-foot dam, having a fishway 



■Miscellaneous. 



319 



with a rise of one in six, which is quite steep, would 
have the way extend 36 feet down stream it will be 
seen how easily fish might go past it, and that is a mod- 
erately steep gradient, if possible make it one in ten. 
With dams alternately projecting from each side, as 
shown, the force of the water is broken and eddies are 
formed which permit the fish to rush, rest, and so as- 
cend. There are more complicated forms of fishways, 
some patented, but for a little trout stream this simple 
form will do. 

If it is desirable to stop all kinds of fish from ascend- 



^^- 



^ 



]iy 






^ 







^ 



gj 



C^ 



J 



^ 



-7^' 



A M. 



Forms of Fishways. 



ing, a trap at the top can be arranged and the fish as- 
sorted. Some figures of difi:erent devices are here 
given. Those who wish to pursue the subject further 
are referred to the Reports of the U. S. and State Fish 
Commissions. The McDonald fishway — as he patent- 
ed it but did not invent it the name is legitimate — I 
believe to be the best form if properly built and pro- 
tected. It is too complicated for small ways such as 



320 Alodeni Fishculture i)i Freshand Salt Water. 

private ponds require. The State of New York had 
one on the Hudson, at Troy, but it was poorly made, 
was bolted to the apron of the dam, dpd, when that 




::^ 



Forms of Fish ways. 



floated up, the foot of the fishway was in the air. The 
figures show several models for retarding the water. 




CPIAPTER XLV. 



FISHES WHICH GUARD THEIR YOUNG. 



A correspondent asks: "Is there any other fish be- 
sides the dogfish which guards its young?" He refers 
to the fresh-water dogfish, Aniia caha, called in the 
West and South lawyer, bowfin, John A. Grindle and 



Miscellaneous. 321 

Johnny Grindle, while in Vermont it is the "mudfish." 
Of this fish Mr. Charles Hallock says in his Sports- 
man's Gazetteer: "While the parent still remains with 
the young, if the family become suddenly alarmed, the 
capacious mouth of the old fish will open, and in rushes 
the entire host of little ones ; the ugly maw is at once 
closed and off she rushes to a place of security, when 
the little captives are set at liberty. If others are con- 
versant with the above facts, I shall be very glad; if 
not, shall feel chagrined for not making them known 
long ago." Mr, Hallock's book was printed in 1877, 
and I do not remember to have seen this matter re- 
ferred to since, except that his remarks are quoted in 
the Fisheries Industries (1884), Section I., page 659. 
There are many fresh-water fishes which guard their 
young, and it is my belief, based on the capture and 
dissection of many individuals, that it is the tnale which 
does the guarding. All the catfish tribe guard their 
voune: until thev scatter, swimming below the little 
black school for several days. Black bass, rock bass, 
sticklebacks and all the sunfishes guard both eggs and 
young until the brood separates in search of food. It 
is possible that the crappies also guard their young, but 
I do not know their habits in this respect. 

There is a beautiful little fish in India, brought here 
for ornamental purposes, called paradise fish. I have 
bred them in small tanks ; the male makes a floating 
nest of air bubbles among the weeds and coaxes the 
female to deposit her eggs therein, but after she has 
done that he will not let her go near the nest, and hunts 
her to the furthest corner, sometimes killing her. He 
fans the eggs, and when the young hatch and wander 
from the nest he will take them in his mouth and re- 
turn them. Some of the sticklebacks make elaborate 



322 Modern Fishculturc in FrcsJi and Salt Water. 

nests of twigs and the male takes entire charge of the 
household. 

The male sea-horse, Hippocampus, has a pouch like 
a marsupial, in place of an anal fin, in which the female 
lays her eggs and he cares for them and their young. 
The males of some tropical fishes are said to carry and 
hatch the eggs in their mouths. 



CHAPTER XLVI. 

HOW FISH FIND THEIR OWN RIVERS. 

On this subject the late Professor James W. Milner 
wrote some years ago in Harper's Magazine, and really 
nothing more is known about it to-day. He said : "The 
long held and only recently rejected theory that the 
shoals of fishes moved in a vast mass along the coast, 
sending oti' detachments into each river as they passed 
its mouth, is to be attributed to John Gilpin and some 
other authors, who have written fiowingly on the sub- 
ject. The recent careful investigations of naturalists 
indicate that the anadromous fishes, those entermg the 
livers and bodies of fresh water from the sea, do not 
have an extended range in the ocean, and that each 
river's colony remains, after returning, in the deep 
waters opposite their river. The motive for the move- 
ment of these shoals of anadromous fishes, or rather 
how it is incited, has scarcely been explained. The 
life of the fishes has always been a mystery. It is not a 
search for food, as they do not eat while in fresh water; 



Miscellaneous. 323 

the opening of hundreds of stomachs will fail to find 
food present. It is an easy disposal of the question as 
to how each colony recognizes its native river to say 
that 'it is instinctive.' So it is. also, when the butcher's 
horse recognizes the familiar gates ; but we have some 
evidence as to what senses he uses. The fishes, prob- 
ably prompted by functional disturbance from the 
tumid ovaries and spermaries, are incited to movement. 
The courses of the sea. unmarked as they are, are, 
within each colony's limit, their habitual pathways. An 
unerring capacity in the fish for finding its own river 
ma) be no more than that which guides the hermit- 
crab to the shell of the natica. The latter goes to hide 
iis sensitive body, with an apparent nervous trepidation 
at its unprotected condition. The former, with an un- 
easiness of body from the functional changes it is 
undergoing, is impelled to activity. The transmitted 
habit of ascending the stream is, as it were, blended and 
alloyed with the substance of the nerves, and. aroused 
by its condition, carries it, without conscious purpose, 
into the river of its progenitors and its own. The im- 
pulses of the fish are only in a slightly more compli- 
cated series than those of the crab. That it should be 
the instinct for a specific stream, established through 
inheritance of many generations, is easier to under- 
stand than that it is a sort of memory of the place of 
its immature life, as the theory of fishculture makes it 
and as observation seems to sustain. In the waters of 
the Delaware, where there were no salmon originally, 
the young salmon placed in Bushkill Creek returned 
after five years and werfe taken, not only in the Dela- 
ware River, but the larger number in the neighborhood 
of Bushkill Creek. It is not essential that all fishes 
should have this impelling influence, whatever it may 



324 Modern Fishcidture in Fresh and Salt Water. 

be, as, like gregarious mammals and birds, they flock 
together, following the leadership of whichever for the 
time takes it. The idea is suggested that the senses 
may be the guiding agent, that a fish goes nosing along 
the coast, or tasting the streams, until it recognizes its 
own. The convexity of the cornea must afford the 
fishes a very limited range of vision. The supposed 
dullness of the sense of smell and of «taste in fishes 
might alone dispose of the suggestion that these are em- 
ployed. The following occurrence, however, would 
seem to decide to the contrary : The Russian River, 
emptying into the Pacific, north of San Francisco, had 
its mouth entirely closed by the waves during the 
storm. The colony of salmon made their yearly mi- 
gration from the deep waters toward the mouth of the 
river, and many of them raced through the surf and 
landed high and dry on the sand that walled them out 
from their native river. The migration of the salmon 
into some of the Pacific rivers is a frenzied advance 
over shoals, rapids and cascades, far into thin streams 
and brooks, where they arrive battered and weary, to 
accomplish their exhaustive reproductive labors and 
drop back, the sport of the current, dead and dying, 
toward the sea;" 



CHAPTER XLVIL 



DYNAMITING A LAKE. 



Hod.o-e Lake, on the head waters of the Willowemoc, 
Sullivan Co., N. Y., was populated with eels, pickerel, 



Miscellaneous. 325 

catfish, perch and sunfish. The owner wished to clear 
his pond of aU these, render it lifeless and then restock 
it with trout, for the waters were cool enough in sum- 
mer ! In April, 1899, 200 holes, fifty feet apart, were 
cut through the ice and dynamite in half-pound sticks, 
twelve to' each hole, were lowered to within four feet of 
the bottom. Each lot of sticks was connected by wire 
to electric batteries, so arranged that there would be 
three explosions about half a second apart. The but- 
ton was pressed and columns of ice and water, from 10 
to 15 feet in diameter, went up a hundred feet or more. 
The concussion shook the earth about the shores and 
the lake was barren of fish, insect larvse and crusta- 
ceans. The larvae will all come back, but the owner 
will have to see to the vegetation and the crustaceans. 
If he gets his plants from neighboring lakes of the 
same character he will get all thes': forms entangled in 
it without paying further attention to them. 



CHAPTER XLVIII. 

TO MEASURE A FLOW OF WATER. 

Often a correspondent seeks advice about trout 
ponds and to a question regarding the highest tempera- 
tures and the amount of water flowing in the driest 
time, replies that he is ignorant on these points. The 
temperatures he can get with more or less accuracy, 
dependent on the unreliability of cheap and untested 
thermometers ; but the amount of flow is usuallv a 



2,2(y Modern Fishculfure in Fresh and Salt Water 



matter of wild guessing. An expert can guess with 
some nearness by a mental estimate of how long it 
would take a stream to fill a certain tank, but this is 
only a guess. I had seen tables given in an algebraic 
form, which, as far as I am concerned, might as well 
never have been written, for, while as a schoolboy I 
was forced through such studies, I promptly forgot 
them. Anything mathematical was too heavy for a 
brain not fitted to bear such burdens. Yet 1 must tell 
in this book how to do the trick with exactness, and the 
occasion brought the man, as usual. I wrote to a 
friend, Mr. W. B. Osterhout, of Freeport, N. Y., one of 
the engineers of the Brooklyn Water Works. He 
writes : 



"Col. Fred Mather : It gives me great pleasure 
to comply with your request of March 30. The for- 
mula of which you speak is known as Francis' formula 
and is for measuring the discharge of water over a 

weir: 0=3.33XLXH^ or Q=3.33XLxjH^: Q= 

Cubic feet of water per second; L=; Length of weir; 
FI=Head or depth of overflow. 






^'^ / 




/^ '" g 3 . 



"The conditions are : The inner face of weir, as A B 
(Fig. 2), must be not less than tw^ice the depth of over- 
flow, as A M measured from A to horizontal portion of 
water's surface, A to M, and not to curved surfaces, at 
C, and the length of A A of weir ( Fig. i ) not less 



Miscellaneous. 3^7 

than three times the head, A M. The formula given is 
for a weir without end contractions, as Fig. i ; that is, 
the width of flume leading to weir must be the same 
width as the overflow and not contracted, as in Fig. 3. 
After getting Q, or cubic feet of water flowing per 
second, it is easily reduced to gallons flowing per min- 
ute, hour or day. As there are 1.728 cubic inches in a 
cubic foot and 231 cubic inches in a gallon, a cubic foot 
of water contains 1,728 inches divided by 231 inches, 
or 7.4805194 gallons, or nearly yi gallons. The flow 
is generally calculated for the number of gallons per 
day of twenty-four hours." 

There must be other mathematical dunces, and so I 
wrote Mr. Osterhout that his formula was no doubt 
correct, but was not in the shape to be "understanded 
by the people"; also that fishculturists reckoned the 
flow per hour, and that if he would kindly translate this 
formula into a flow per hour per foot width of dam it 
would just hit the mark. 

Then he got down to the fishcultural level and wrote : 

"Col. Fred Mather : Your mathematical difficulties 
are appreciated and I enclose you a table, showing gal- 
lons per hour discharged by a one-foot weir for depths 
from o to I foot. I have also put in the decimal of a 
foot corresponding to each half inch. For any weir 
other than one foot in length multiply the number of 
gallons opposite any head by length of weir. 

''Example. — How many gallons per hour will flow- 
over a 4-foot weir, with a head of 3^ inches ? I4,I28X 
4=56,512 gallons. If the weir is 4 feet 5 inches long, 
the 14.128 for a head of 3-^ inches must be muUiplied by 



328 Modern Fishcnitnre in Fresh and Salt Water. 

4.4167, the decimal .4167 being equivalent to 5 inches, 
which is shown in the first column." 

Now^ that my engineering friend had got down to 
the water level of the fishculturist, there was nothing to 
do but to give his latest formula, and here you have it 
in his own words : 



FRANCIS' FORMULA: 

Discharge in cubic feet per second = 3.33 X length of overfall in feet X 

y cube of head in feet. 

Discharge in gallons per hour = 3.33 Xby length of overfall in feetX 

1 cube of head in feet X 7.480r) X3,600. 

7.480.") = number of gallons in one cubic foot of water or very nearly 7^. 
3,600 = number of seconds per hour. 

l^isvharpe in gallons per hour of a veir one foot long nntliout end con- 
tractions for depth from o to one foot. 



Head in 


Head in 


1 
Gcdlons per 


Head in 


Head in 


Gallon.') per 


Feet, 


Inches. 


Hour. 


Feet. 


Inches. 


Hour. 


0.0417 


¥> 


764 


0.5417 


6Ja 


35,753 


0.0833 


1 


2.156 


0.5833 


7 


39,950 


12.-)0 


IH 


3,963 


0.6250 


"i'i 


44.310 


0.1667 


2 


6,104 


0.6667 


8 


48,817 


0.2083 


2ii 


8,.525 


0.7083 


8^4 


.53,457 


0.2500 


3 


11.210 


0.7500 


9 


58,246 


0.2917 


314 


14,128 


0.7917 


91.' 


63,171 


0.3333 


4 


17.2.56 


0.8333 


10 


68,215 


0.3750 


4I3 


20,593 


0.8750 


101 '2 


73,399 


0.4167 


i) 


24,122 


0.9167 


11 


78,708 


0.4583 


51^ 


27,823 


0.9.583 


11)2^ 


84,126 


0.5000 


" 


31,705 


1.0000 


12 


89,676 



ADDENDA. 



JANUARY 1, 1900. 



GROWTH OF TROUT. 



We are always learning, and in 1899, after what I 
have written, I went to the northwestern corner of Wis- 
consin, up the Brule River, to take charge for a short 
time of a large trout preserve belonging to a gentle- 
man living in St. Louis. Fishcultural operations had 
been going on for several years previous, and the year- 
ling trout were only 2^ to 4 inches long ; while the 
two-year-olds would not average over 6 inches. 
They had been well fed, but the water was cold and 
they had not the appetites of the trout of the warmer 
waters of Long Island. 

The springs were 43° Fahr.. and the pools in sum- 
mer never rose above 50°. These pools were made at 
the outlet of a small pond of some 4 acres and in swift 
water. If I should remain here, as I shall not, I 
would make the rearing pools where there are no 
springs, and where the ice makes thickest in winter. 
This would give warmer water in summer and a great- 
er consumption of food ; consequently a greater growth. 

• 329 



330 Addenda. 

The water in hatching troughs there, up to Jan. i, 1900, 
has varied from 38° to 36° Fahr., more often at the 
lower figure. 



GRAYLING. 



Since the book was in type I have had further ex- 
perience with the grayHng. The eggs came from Mon- 
tana to northern Wisconsin in May, 1899, in very bad 
shape. Of the few hatched a very small number lived 
to take food, and of these 80 per cent, died before the 
close of the year. Mr. S. P. Wires, Superintendent of 
the U. S. F. C. Station at Duluth, Minn., has no liking 
for the fish, if he is expected to feed and raise it. Mr. 
Frank N. Clark, of the Michigan stations, is of the 
same opinion. They find the eggs hatch well enough, 
but beef liver is not the food for them, and the best 
thing to do is to turn them out when they begin to 
take food, and this is my more mature view of the fish. 
My first experience was somehow more fortunate than 
that of later ye^rs. All agree that the adult fish does 
not mature its eggs in confinement. 



INDEX. 



PAGE 

'Acre of Water" i6 

Alewives .• • • ^43 

American Fish Culturists 

Association 9 

Basses, the Black 213 

Bath Hatchery 44 

Batrachians ^^^ 

Beef Lights and Maggots. 130 
Bell and Mather Hatch- 
ing Cone .^.•••- 199 

Birds that Destroy Fish.. 270 

Black Fish 290 

Bladderwort 27» 

Blooming of Ponds 311 

Blue-Back Trout 140 

Brook Trout •• MO 

Brown Trout 140. i49 

Bullhead 239 

Bullpouts 239 

Bull-Trout 140 

Carp 20. 241 

Cat Fish 239 

Cats ^^ 

ChamiDers. W. Oldham.. 76 

Channel Cat 240 

Chars 146 

Chase Jar 203 

Chemicals 24 

Chester Tidal Hatcher. . . 295 

Chinese Fishculture I3 

Chinook ^40 

Cod 290. 292 

Cold Spring Harbor 10 

Crappies 221 

'Cut-Throat Trout 140 

Cyclops ^^^ 

Dams ^■^'^ 



PAGE 

Disease 255 

Dobson 281 

Dog Salmon 14" 

Dog Fish 321 

Dolly Varden Trout 140 

Domestication of Fish. .19. 20 

Dragon Fly 280 

Drains ^^^ 

Dynamiting a Lake 324 

Egg Impregnation 02 

Egg Packing for Ship- 
ment 72 

Eggs. Adhesive 207 

Eggs in Eels 309 

Eggs in Fish, table of 310 

Eggs in Sunfish 309 

Egg Transportation 72 

Enemies 207 

Epidemics 260 

Feeders, Automatic 104 

Filters 50 

Fingerlings ^3p 

Fish, Barren 204 

Fish as Food for Fish. . . 131 
Fishculture Antiquity.... 13 
Fish Return to Rivers... 322 

Fishways • 31" 

Fish which Guard Their 

Young 320 

Floors 44 

Flounder 290 

Flow Measurement 325 

Foods for Fry 92, 106 

Foods for Trout Pond. . . 130 

Frog Culture 

Frogs 

Frost Fish 



301 
269 
208 



331 



332 



Index. 



PAGE 

Fry, care of 86 

Fry Feeding 92 

Fry Growth 103. 329 

Fry vs. Fingerlings 138 

Fry Planting 138 

Gammariis 132 

Gravel 81 

Grayling 175, 330 

Golden Trout 146 

Green's Box 196 

Hatching Drains 50 

Hatching House. 40 

Hatching Preparations. . . 52 

Haddock 290 

Haslets 132 

Helgramite 281 

Hellbenders 270 

Horned Pouts 239 

Horse Meat 130 

Hoxsie's Automatic 

Feeder 96 

Hybrid Fish 169 

Inbreeding 102 

Insects 279 

Japanese Feeding Meth- 
ods 134 

Johnnie Grindle 321 

Kingfisher 276 

Lake Trout 546, 166 

Lobster 296 

Maitland Feeding Sys- 
tem 98 

McDonald Jar 204 

Miller's Thumb 268 

Mink 286 

Mud Fish 321 

]\Iuscalonge 191 

Muskrats 284 

Mussels 129 

Osprey 277 

Otter 286 

Ouananiche 148 

Pacific Salmon 147 

Parasites 250 

Pickerel 191 

Pike 191 

Pike Perch 230 

Page. W. F 218 

Ponds .105. 112 



PAGE 

Porgy 290 

Quinnet Salmon 146 

Raccoon 287 

Rainbow Trout 146, 156 

Red Fish 146 

Refrigerator Boxes for 

Salmon Eggs 75 

Reptiles 269 

Russian Method of Tak- 
ing Eggs 64 

Salmon 90, 146, 147 

Salmonid?e 146 

Salmon in the Connecti- 
cut 15 

"Salmon Trout" 30 

Salmo Salar 146 

Salt Water Fish 290 

Sand Pike 232 

Sawdust 24 

Sawyer 232 

Screens for Ponds 123 

Sea Bass 290 

Sea Herring 290 

Sebago Salmon 146 

Sewage 28 

Sex of Trout 56 

Shad 192 

Shad and Striped Bass.. . 170 
Shad Fry Across the At- 
lantic 198 

Shad Hatching 10 

Shad in the Hudson 14 

Sheepshead 290 

Silver Salmon 146 

Smelt 210 

Snakes 269 

Sockeye 146 

Soft Clams 129 

Spanish Mackerel 290 

Spawners, Annual 173 

Spawn from Wild Trout. 66 

Spawning Funnel 63 

Squeteague 290 

Steelhead 146 

Streams 107 

Striped Bass 204 

Stripping a Trout 62 

Sturgeon 245 

Sunapee Trout 146 ■ 



Index 



333 



PAGE 

Tar 48 

Tautog 290 

Temperature of Water 

65° 127 

Terrapins 306 

Torn Cod 294 

Tools for the Hatchery. . . 82 
Tortoise and Turtles. . . . 274 
Transportation of^Fish.. . 144 

Troughs 42, 46 

Trout 146 

Trout Breeding 22 

Trout Traps for Spawn- 

ers 68 

Trout Culture 17 

Trout Eggs, care of 78 

Trout Eggs 34. 56 

Trout Eggs, Number.... 70 

Trout Egg Taking 60 

Trout Food. . 128 



P.\GE 

Trout for Market 35 

Trout Growth 103, 329 

Trout Hatching in Bulk. 83 
Trout Spawning, Natural 31 

Trout Varieties 30 

Walleyed Pike 230, 232 

Water Flow Measure- 
ment 325 

Water for Trout Breed- 
ing 23 

Water Moccasins 274 

Vv/'ater Pollution 24 

Water Snakes 272 

Weak Fish 290 

Western Char 146 

White Fish r8i 

White Perch 228 

Working of Ponds 311 

Wytheville Hatchery 54 

Yellow Perch 245 



s-'Uii 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



002 860 208 A 



